The Headphone Show’s Audiophile Test Tracks
We’ve each created headphone and audio evaluation tracks, and compiled music we might like or just think sounds cool on headphones. We will be adding more tracks and playlists in the future, but for now here are the ones we have.
Resolve
Tidal
Spotify
DMS
Tidal
GoldenSound
Tidal
Spotify
Listener
Apple
Tidal
Spotify
Nice listening on all the above lists. Thanks!
“Happy Returns / Ascendant Here on…” from Hand. Cannot. Erase (Deluxe Edition) by Steven Wilson, released 27th February 2015.
#FUN
Yeah, love this stuff. It’s well done.
Baldych tracks were also good. I’d like to hear lists by the other Headphones.com staff as well, if they haven’t already been posted elsewehere. (Even a few sea shanties, if that’s yer bent. 
)
Bah gawd that’s @Mad_Economist ‘s music
The title including the words “audiophile test tracks” excludes the commanding majority of the music I listen to, which is typically weirdly produced and recorded at best.
Sine waves? Wait, that’s probably too mainstream for you. Square waves?
Ok, what about @Chrono, @Precogvision and some other folks then?
Hey! I had a write up a few years ago about mine, and they haven’t really changed much since then. It’s just buried pretty deep in my reviewer profile on the site:
Mine aren’t really conventional ‘audiophile’ songs or particularly well-mastered. They’re mostly just songs I’ve listened to hundreds of times, that I enjoy, and that I’ve learned how to correspond with frequency response. So I use them at shows to quickly ascertain what I’m hearing and to build my impressions. Most of what I’m listening for is also very early on in the song because audible memory is pretty fallible and I don’t want to be sifting the slider during A/B comparisons.
Right on! Thanks for the link to your list!
So glad to have found this topic! Thank you taronlissimore for posting it.
It has really been valuable to me for expanding my playlist library. I use it Audirvana Studio to strean Qobuz.
I have a few tracks that I didn’t see here, but I have found to be really well engineered with excellent sonics:
“Keep the Wolves Away” by Uncle Lucius: Great music with extreme deep bass that you can feel if your phones can reproduce it.
“Vogue” by Madonna. Don’t laugh - the engineering is outstanding and the surround sound is fantastic.
“Up Close” by Ottmar Leibert is a binaural acoustical instrumental flamenco recording. It is so impressive for the music and not gimmicy like most binaural recordings. The binaural effect serves to highlight the skill and artistry of the musicians. The recording is described as “a dummy head recording, sometimes also called holophonics. The listener has to use headphones to experience the 3D surround-sound quality of the music since the recording uses the head-related transfer function. Recorded live-to-stereo in August of 2007. No edits were made and the volume was not compressed.”
It’s available at Bandcamp in 24/96 high rez.
Nice to meet another Taeyeon, LOONA, country music appreciator here.
I generally only listen on YouTube btw. So don’t really have a singular list of test tracks either. When I run across somethin interesting, unusual, or just good (imho) though, I’ll try to post it in the music forum.
Anyone else on the Headphones.com staff would also be appreciated. Let’s hear your takes!
I enjoy a little Madonna as well now and then, audiojerry. The Ottmar Leibert was also nice.
You might want to check out some of the tracks here as well…
Since nobody asked, here they are on:
Resolves fun playlist has become my dinner playlist haha my wife and I like it a lot.
Looking forward to listening to some new music, thank you!
How about taking a few of your tracks and pointing out why you choose them for testing - what do they do well to demo a system?
Thank you.
