What songs/albums do you use to test your monitors/headphones?

[paloverde412]

That’s the whole question.

Post links, if possible?

[Peake]

Autechre's "Chiastic Slide". Noise music most quickly reveals imbalances, if you're looking to confirm spectral response. "Tewe" and "Nuane" are great. Can you hear each 'instrument' individually and can you hear the background reverbs/ambience. If the speakers and/or room have bass bumps especially in the midbass "Tewe" will help reveal them.

Of course a good orchestral recording such as RCA Red Seal vinyl to confirm the familiar sounds correct. An SACD of "Gaucho" definitely helps. youtube links won't help as they're low fidelity.

[Liquidcolor]

Donald Fagen’s “I.G.Y” or “New Frontier.”

[Kattefjaes]

I have a recording of Holst's Planets which I often go back to (cond. Adrian Boult), and a really lovely recording of Bruckner's 5th (cond. Gunther Wand) which is eerily good for spotting problems with upper mids when the brass in the last movement masks the strings.

I also like to resort to tracks that I know should sound a certain way, "Comfortably Numb" being stereotypical, or "Rocket Brothers" by Kashmir. It's fun to run up "The Bell" from Tubular Bells 2 to hear layering building up. "Angel" by Massive Attack is always quite a nice workout- to get the edge in the bass of the intro without sounding shouty. It's quite nice to listen for the mechanical subtlety of the piano labouring away in tracks from the album "Knives Don't Have Your Back" by Emily Haines too. It's an absolutely stunning album which has deceptive amounts of detail down in the recording as a bonus. Oh, I also like to bang through some Venetian Snares or Igorrr just to see how well everything holds up. Igorrr's stuff is far-better produced than it has any right to be, honestly.

Basic tests are more putting a bunch of sines through, noise in and out of phase etc., just to see if everything is hooked up correctly, nothing is rattling or on the fritz etc., which you can do with software, a modular etc., but I have an old test CD that I keep around as FLACs just because it saves hassle.

[Illwiggle]

Thriller

[timothyd4y]

Civil Wars Poison and Wine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNlxKH9Jtmc
Rudimental Dark Clouds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSubA7PWJmU
Zaki Hussain / Jan Gabarek Making Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQRvrkSj5rA

Everything but the Girl and Massive Attack used to be favorites too.

Stream them from Tidal and get the feels.

[mritenburg]

Donald Fagen’s “I.G.Y” or “New Frontier.”

That's funny, F.M. is one of my calibration/reference tracks.

[metamorphmuses]

Ryoji Ikeda
for example...



Alva Noto
for example...


Isolrubin BK, from the album Crash Injury Trauma
in particular track #3


And of course also

Autechre

Caveat: Naturally, I am referring to the original 16 bit, 44.1 kHz resolution (or higher) version of these releases, not the streaming examples I have linked to.

[Peake]

Donald Fagen’s “I.G.Y” or “New Frontier.”

That's funny, F.M. is one of my calibration/reference tracks.

Freaking fantastic song and recording.

[Liquidcolor]

That's funny, F.M. is one of my calibration/reference tracks.

Fagen’s “Morph the Cat” is great as well, it’s got a heavier, extended low end compared to his other solo releases. “H-Gang” is a go to.

[BlinkyLights]

Without being cheeky, several of *my* favorite songs...

It doesn't matter what they are, it matters if *you* know them well; what works for me may not work for you.

I play songs/tracks where I know every note, every section, every bend of the solo, every drum hit, all of it.

Then I'm comparing it to my memory of the zillion other times I've heard those pieces on many other systems.

[metamorphmuses]

I just thought of some more:

Florian Hecker


Ø (Mika Vainio)


Ueno Masaaki


Lustmord


Merzbow
https://bludhoney.com/track/spiral-blast

[flo]

Fun thread, I've just upgraded my monitor speakers recently and had a lot of joy with these:

Steely Dan - Aja (the album)
Roxy Music - Avalon
Azymuth - Azimüth

For electronic music, anything Basic Channel, Luke Vibert, I:Cube, Morgan Geist / Metro Area...

Surely there's tons more I cannot think of right now.

Cheers

[Yes Powder]

My go-tos are Hyperballad by Björk, and Yellow Calx by Aphex Twin.
Hyperballad has a nice range of sounds starting off sparse in the beginning and gradually building density.
Yellow Calx has a lot of quick and resonant bursts of noise, that I feel help highlight any problem areas in a speaker's frequency response, and I've heard it enough times on enough different setups that I feel should know exactly how it sounds.

[pricklyrobot]

I always put on Black Sabbath s/t 1st LP whenever I set up my stereo in a new spot.

Though I'm not enough of an audiophile to do much tweaking/calibration beyond: 'Are both speakers making noise? Do I need to turn the Bass knob up a quarter turn?'

[Dilibob]

"kind of blue", there is a lot of empty space in that album. I especially listen to the acoustic bass lines, to make sure they are coming through clean.

[nikmettez]

Beck - Paper tiger
Nils Frahm - Sunson
Chris Jones - No sanctuary here
Billie Eilish - You should see me in a crown
...

[Carl A]

Raga Darbari - Ustaad Vilyat Khan
Foreshadowed - Eno/Budd
Master of Puppets - Metallica
Rock Box - Run DMC
We Die Young - Alice in Chains
Sssh Peaceful - Miles
Raag Bhimpilasi - Pandit Nikhil Banerjee
Papa New Guinea - FSOL
Ethnicolour - JMJ
Walnut - Moby
Love without sound - White Noise
Shmoney Dance - Elephant Man
Klemperer - Beethoven 9th
Soul Fire - Lee Perry
Tales of the future - Vangelis/Roussos
Kick drum - Felix
Mantronix - Cold getting dumb
Blood Vibes - Masters at work
Panacea - Tron RMX

[cretaceousear]

Peter Gabriel - So
Philip Glass - Glassworks
but mostly I just plug them in and see (hear) how it is

[James_S]

NIN - Closer. If that kick/ opening bass sounds good, we're onto a winner.

[Chopper]

Future sound of London. The LIFEFORMS album. That intro can tell you everything you need to know.