I think there has been a thread here about what music can be used to evaluate headphones. I am interested to everyone here and what music blows you away regardless of headphones or speakers etc?
I have a number of test tracks here are some.
Born on a Sunday track #3 The Seduction of Claude Debussey; Art of Noise
Garador’s Flight Track #1, Elysium, Jo Blankenburg
Lovers in Motion track #2, Lumina Nights, Jonn
Serrie.
Life Is On The Sea, track #10, Sitar & Bossa, Bebo Best & His Super Lounge Orchestra.
I feel The Love, (Featuring Venus Hum) #13, The Complex, Blueman Group
Requiem: Dies irea, Track # 3, Requiem, Karl Jenkins.
Prisencolinendinsinainciusol, Track #12, Le Migliori, Minacelentano
Purcell, Music for Queen Mary, the whole album, Academy of Ancient Music, King’s College Choir, Cambridge, Stephen Ceolbury
Elizabeth, The Golden age OST, the entire album. Craig Armstrong & AR Rahman
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One more:
Dhol Dogs Track # 8, Anatomic, Afro Celt Sound System.
Afro Celt Sound System is one of thr greatest fusion bands that has ever been.
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For me it’s Acoustic music. Acoustic rock or acoustic guitar anything recorded acoustically floats my boat. Though I do have a weakness for 80’s music.
-Paul-
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Putting in a word for Maria Schneider’s “The Thompson Fields,” a great and great-sounding album.
Yes “And You and I” from Close to the Edge, George Winston “Colors/Dance” from Autumn and the entire I Robot album from the Alan Parsons Project
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Ok… in the last couple of week of doing much more headphone listening(mostly big classical orchestral scores) the difference between headphones and my speakers is “different.” Neither better or worse.The B&W 805 can take me to huge volume that I am still comfortable with but headphones takes me into the balance and interplay between section of the orchestra.
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Honestly I would say Orchestra/acoustic/live performances/bigband etc usually give me the most Wow! I tend to just let music play on random and I love when a track comes on and just envelops me…such a great feeling!
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Hey Darth Pool… I have an extra special challenge. i got involved with the SACD/DSD/Multichannel thing and I have a set-up with 5 speakers,appropriate amplification and appropriate play back equipment. So,I am all over the place.
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Ha, my movie room is setup for 5.1 and I was thinking of tinkering with it and DSD…just haven’t had the time to fall down that hole lol
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well…you can just start off with a player/streamer or whatever you want to call it. You have to make sure everything supports multi-channel playback from a multi.source(right now-mostly hardware CD-SACD’s). This is NOT quadrophonic 1970’s recordings. It’s just starts to get compicated. I have a Cambridge universal player that supports SACD and I only use it for audio uses. It works with the multichannel stuff. I think it also works great with stereo because of the DAC’S. I love my Cambridge.
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I love Beethoven’s 6th, the Pastorale. I’ve got it on RCA Red Seal, conducted by Toscanini, and on Deutsch Grammophon vinyl with the Berliner Philharmoniker. And I would buy another, more modern version also. A must have piece of music for me.
Elsewhere, I’ve talked about Offenbach’s Gaite Parisiene. Been thrilling me since I could stand up. Available on both CD and Vinyl in a brilliant re-master. I’ve compared to the original.
I have, I think 4 copies of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, by Derek and the Dominoes. Wiki link HERE if you don’t know this album. This is the album that pretty much defines the time I had leaving high school and going to college. Every note is chemically burnt into my brain. A close second from those days is Santana Abraxas. This is the album featuring Oye Como Va and Black Magic Woman.
I’ve listened to a lot of music for a long time. NPR used to have a show “Desert Island Discs” with the music you’d have to have if stranded on a desert island. (Hopefully a desert island with good electricity, high end headphones, a cache of NOS tubes, assorted audio gear, Magico and Wilson Audio speakers, and an acoustically perfect listening room). There is a lot of music that has and does thrill me, but these bits are a good place to start.
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Just picking on your mention of music and memory of high school and college. I know it’s a little off topic but music often brings out very strong memories of time in my past. I am sure this is the same for everyone. Whether or not the memories are happy or sad, it’s ability to invoke strong emotions is one of the many facets of music which keeps me coming back time and again.
-Paul-
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Gotta love George Winston. I saw several of his concerts back in the day. No doubt a master of the keys.
And what a hole it is
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oHHH… GEE…maybe we should start a thread for DSD. I am serious.
actually…that is a good way to really kick off a discussion about what music “thrills” a person. There’s a paradox of music that thrilled as a driving teenager and,now,some FORTY years later. OMG!!!
Yes I’ve got to agree with you regarding the multiple emotions that music can bring. Lots of music from my teenage years brings forward strong emotions and memories. I really think that the music makes the memories easier to recall and make them far more vivid.
-Paul-
It sounds a bit cliche but anytime I hear really great recordings it adds a whole other level of enjoyment for me. For example when I hear The XX’s self titled album it is so much more worth putting on my cans and jammin to. Also Rhye’s new album had a few songs that are just gorgeous (Waste and Taste specifically) when listening on a nice setup.
On another level there is different versions of the same classical pieces for example Wellington’s Sieg specifically from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra magnifies the complexity and epicness of the piece while showing off some really cool extra bits that add to the experience of the very well known piece like the walking drum and the cannons/muskets that sound fantastic with the piece.
There is one more type of recording that really makes me enjoy my music more than normal and that is simple ones. Acoustic songs and small arrangements where you can really hear individual channels of separation. For example I love Ed Sheeran’s I See Fire because it is simple and melodic and Natalia Lafourcade’s Danza De Gardenias because it is just plain amazing and you can easily distinguish the layers and intricacies of each channel in the recording. P.S. I just discovered Natalia on her new album and I am kinda obsessed now.
Now one thing that I don’t often find thrilling is overly congested music like most metal. As you could have guessed from the last bit I love to be able to understand the nuances of the different channels in a recording and when the piece is overly congested with instruments, vocals, and effects, it takes away from the impressive nature of the song for me. I understand that there are some awesome songs that would be lumped into my broad category here and I do still enjoy them sometimes but it’s a rarity that I can fully enjoy those types. For intance, Rage Against The Machine’s, Know Your Enemy is a well regarded song for critical listening but it just edges on boring to me (gasp!
) for the simple reason that the guitars and drums all sound like somebody is just crushing the drums and strumming the guitar as hard as possible. Similarly Isis’ Panopticon is a very well regarded “audiophile” album but I can’t even listen to it because it just sounds like autotuned static lol. I’m sorry if I offended some of you metal heads but I just do not enjoy that style even though it is a very well recorded album. Also it is, in part, due to the “loudness wars” which causes the mic to sound worse in my opinion. But there are a few songs that I like. My Name is Mud by Primus is one of the few examples of this because it’s not congested and it doesn’t just scream into the speakers like most metal does.
There is one more kind of music that I really enjoy and that’s lyrical and musical hip hop. Kendrick Lamar’s entire album of To Pimp A Butterfly is a perfect example of this. There is so much soul to this album from the jazzy samples to the heartfelt and real lyrics that clearly come straight from Kendrick’s heart and mind. With no lapses of focus Kendrick killed this album and albums like this give me goosebumps every time and force my to think. I loooove the albums that make me question my own values and ideas like The Blacker The Berry and How much A Doller Cost. And finally Lecrae made this song called Welcome To America which is one of my favorite songs ever.
If you like hip hop listen to this one especially​:arrow_up:
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Anything from Joe Bonamassa especially his live performances.