Top of the Charts: The Songs the Sound Engineers Use to Tune Your Stereo

Car and Driver ^ | Published: Oct 23, 2021 | By Benjamin Hunting

[BradyLS]

I remember Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” being popular in part for reasons of testing stereo sound systems. Particular the clocks chiming the hour at the beginning of “Time.”

...But Dark Side had studio wiz Alan Parsons at the mixing board. I wonder how many albums he mixed are in the list?

[FamiliarFace]

Tom Petty, “Learning to Fly (Live)”
“The crowd starts singing along, Petty’s voice drops out, and if the system is done right, you get a real sense of how big that auditorium is. If not, it tends to collapse and you lose that giant space.”

I like that choice. I think it’s a great one. Pretty sure that was in 2006 in Gatortown.

[FoxInSocks]

Donald Fagen, “I.G.Y.” from The Nightfly, 1982.

[CA_soon_gone]

There are tracks that are good to expose flaws and then there are tracks that just sound good. One of my current favorites to show off both the sub and the midrange (first track).

Boz Scaggs

[dfwgator]

Any Alan Parsons Project record is good, especially Pyramid and Eve.

[F450-V10]

Yes, Pyramid is excellent. When I sold or gave away all my LP albums, that is one out of the three I kept for a souvenir. I haven’t listened to vinyl in about 30 years unfortunately.

[FamiliarFace]

Come on over. We still listen to vinyl. I just bought my husband 2 albums for his recent birthday, and our oldest bought him 3. Hendrix, Clapton, and Ray Charles were 3 of them. We mostly have classic rock, southern rock, and blues here, with a smattering of other genres mixed in for good measure.

[Lurker]

I prefer New Frontier myself.

L

[dfwgator]

A great album. Walk Between Raindrops is such a cool song.

[Beowulf9]

They use Steely Dan’s Hey nineteen.☺️

[NetAddicted]

My brain doesn’t retain info. I’ve already forgotten list of songs, or I would comment.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

*BUMP* for morning coffee. :)

[Repeal The 17th]

Spotify?
(won’t work on any of my browsers)

[NWFree]

I would use Moving in Stereo

[Disambiguator]

Supertramp recordings always sounded very polished, too.

[Iceclimber58]

I remember when audio stores would play something by Mary Black to show off their equipment. The womans voice was considered as close to perfect as humanly possible.

[montag813]

In the late 1980s, I brought vinyls of Thriller and Aja, and used "Billy Jean" and "Black Cow" to test potential speakers. Only a pair of B&W's passed the test at high volumes without any distortions on the intense bass and broad range of those tracks, and they are still running perfectly today.

[Chicory]

Oh my goodness, I just listened to a few minutes of 5 different color noises and now I feel seasick. I guess they really do something to you!

[chuck allen]

If ya wanna test stereo speakers I suggest using Queens “ The Prophets Song” from the Night at the Opera album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZjjsrn9FY4