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?
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.
They use Steely Dan’s Hey nineteen.☺️
My brain doesn’t retain info. I’ve already forgotten list of songs, or I would comment.
*BUMP* for morning coffee. :)
Spotify?
(won’t work on any of my browsers)
I would use Moving in Stereo
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!
Wow, the first song on their list “I Can See Clearly Now” by Holly Cole Trio is great. I just added it to my Spotify “Eclectic” list (songs I like from a wide variety of genres, many of which cannot be easily categorized).
I suggest Lucky Man by ELP.
“Sheffield drive” was an eclectic collection of songs and instrumentals on CD used to test out speakers. I would guess it would be best to have songs that demonstrate different types of sounds...voice(opera and pop). Symphonic music using a side variety of instruments, raw sounds like waves crashing, wind blowing, talking, yelling, sounds of tools, utensils, animal sounds,etc. Would desire the most realistic sounds with no distortion and no emphasis on any frequency . IMHO
Are they kidding? No way!
Nice list. I remember audiophiles using Deacon Blues to tune stereo. I really miss having a good stereo system.
JBL used to run a lot of ads in Rolling Stone showing control booths in music studios, the studios using JBL bookshelf speakers mounted overhead of the control panel. The ads were pretty impressive.
However, the studios were using JBL bookshelf speakers because the smaller JBLs represented the type speaker the average hi-fi enthusiast used, not because the JBL speakers were the absolute best you could buy (although they were pretty good).
As far as albums, the CD ‘Diesel and Dust’ by Midnight Oil came out in an era of mediocre sounding CDs (1987) and always stood out to me as an example of terrific sound engineering. I wonder if it still pops as much as it did then?
Click on the image for details of the contents of the CD.
-PJ
I have about 200 songs...all favorites...stored on my car’s hard drive. There’s room for a lot more and someday I’ll get off my a$$ and load them. Unlike some I don’t expect concert hall sound quality in my car...the basic sound system I have is good enough.