How do you "flex" or show nuance of your music system for visitors?

Dre_J · Jun 19, 2013

.

I’m sure all of us have demo quality LPs or music that we want to play for new visitors to show different aspects of our systems.

What do you play for your new visitors when you want to “Flex” your system and or show how nuanced it can be?

How about listing maybe 5 or more different ones you try to get in the rotation?

Added my first list here

Added some CD/SACD here

Added a few more in-session records here

Johnny Vinyl · Jun 19, 2013

If they ask (and they don't always) to listen to my system, I ask them what they want to hear.

MylesBAstor · Jun 19, 2013

Tape and analog!

Benny Carter: Jazz Giant, Contemporary 15 ips tape (best recording in collection)
Hindemith: Violin Concerto, Decca 15 ips tape
Mallets, Melody and Mayhem: Columbia LP
The Poll Winners: Barney Kessel with Shelly Manne and Ray Brown, Contemporary/Analogue Productions 45 rpm LP reissue
Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells, Classic Records reissue

First runner up: Sonny Meets the Hawk, RCA/Classic Records reissue

mep · Jun 19, 2013

MylesBAstor said:
Tape and analog!

Benny Carter: Jazz Giant, Contemporary 15 ips tape (best recording in collection)
Hindemith: Violin Concerto, Decca 15 ips tape
Mallets, Melody and Mayhem: Columbia LP
The Poll Winners: Barney Kessel with Shelly Manne and Ray Brown, Contemporary/Analogue Productions 45 rpm LP reissue
Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells, Classic Records reissue

First runner up: Sonny Meets the Hawk, RCA/Classic Records reissue

I have your bottom four picks.

Dre_J · Jun 19, 2013

John, If they don't ask for something and you want to wow them, what do you choose?

Thanks for participating Myles!

Mark, are those your go to recordings that Myles posted or are you just saying you have them? If it's the later, what are your 5 or more flex and nuance recordings?

Shaffer · Jun 19, 2013

I play the first side of Underworld's first album and side-2 of Rhythm of the Saints. Although, after ~3 minutes of Underworld, most discussions come to an end.

Mike Lavigne · Jun 19, 2013

5 that come to mind at the moment, there are so many......

'Moonlight Serande', Ray Brown, Laurindo Aimeida; Jeton Direct to Disc Lp original pressing. track 1, side 1.......Moonlight Sonata/Round About Midnight.....played together.

'Wish You Were Here', Pink Floyd, 15ips RTR tape. from the cut 'Wish You Were Here' until the end of side 2.

Duets, Netrebko/Villazon, DG Lp, side one, track one. Puccini, Le boheme...act 1.

Fleetwood Mac, 'Live', WB Lp, side 2, track 3, 'Never Going Back Again', solo, Lindsey Buckingham.

'Till the Sun Turns Black', Ray Lamontagne, RCA Lp, side 2, track 1, 'You Can Bring Me Flowers'.

I could list dozens of Classical cuts that would fit the bill that I play often.

Dre_J · Jun 19, 2013

Felix, Thanks for sharing.

Dre_J · Jun 19, 2013

Mike Lavigne said:
5 that come to mind at the moment, there are so many......

Don't I know it!

Mike Lavigne said:
I could list dozens of Classical cuts that would fit the bill that I play often.

That's why I said 5 or more.

Go ahead and list some of the classical. I'm sure there are many that would like to know what gives your system and guests a good workout.

Johnny Vinyl · Jun 20, 2013

Dre_J said:
John, If they don't ask for something and you want to wow them, what do you choose?

Thanks for participating Myles!

Mark, are those your go to recordings that Myles posted or are you just saying you have them? If it's the later, what are your 5 or more flex and nuance recordings?

All my choices would be on vinyl then.

Supertramp - Crime of the Century (Speakers Corner)
Neil Young - Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise)
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (Classic)
David Gilmour - Live In Gdansk (Columbia)
Dexter Gordon - One Flight Up (Cisco)

Groucho · Jun 20, 2013

It seems to me that the huge difference between a really good system and the run of the mill, is its ability to maintain the sound of, and separation between, instruments, unaffected by volume or signal. Second is the ability to produce extended bass that is not just a home-theatre style rumble.

As such, I don't think that jazz or Pink Floyd is going to amaze anyone as much as some big orchestral stuff with its huge dynamic range and broad stereo image with individual instruments spread across it (not just pan-potted). So first I would play a track something like this:
http://open.spotify.com/track/0F0nvduoPIDIplzkGY3Rfw
(Korngold: Between Two Worlds:The World at War/The Next World/The Blitz in London/The Ship from An Introduction to Entarte Musik)

If your system can reproduce a live-sounding rock track in your living room at realistic levels, that's going to impress anyone. Such as this excellent track by Neil Young and Crazy horse (that even sounds great in 16/44.1 kHz

):
http://open.spotify.com/track/72DgEGVM9ezqKOB0Kxo2wV
(Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Carmichael from Greendale)

Synthetic sounds can go beyond 'natural' and make good demos of a system. Here's an amazing track that combines overpoweringly-deep bass and ear-tickling stereo analogue synth sounds:
http://open.spotify.com/track/1Pz0pTjKwlM52IdWZU4s2K
(Goldfrapp: Crystalline Green from Black Cherry)

My nod to jazz would be something like this which has got quite a hard dynamic edge tempered with rich, resonant bass and features just a few instruments recorded cleanly with space between them:
http://open.spotify.com/track/17uPeGmP6DrxfIRcNy9067
(Bad Plus: 1979 Semi-Finalist from Give)

Finally a crowd-pleaser that sounds fantastic on a larger system particularly because of the deep bass, open space and virtuoso production:
http://open.spotify.com/track/4veRrJjAXnJi95hlJvQUzc
(Grace Jones: Slave to the Rhythm from Tracks in Private Life - The Compass Years)

Dre_J · Jun 20, 2013

John72953 said:
All my choices would be on vinyl then.

Supertramp - Crime of the Century (Speakers Corner)
Neil Young - Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise)
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (Classic)
David Gilmour - Live In Gdansk (Columbia)
Dexter Gordon - One Flight Up (Cisco)

Great choices.

Dre_J · Jun 20, 2013

.
Great choices. Thanks for sharing.

Groucho said:
It seems to me that the huge difference between a really good system and the run of the mill, is its ability to maintain the sound of, and separation between, instruments, unaffected by volume or signal. Second is the ability to produce extended bass that is not just a home-theatre style rumble.

Agreed.

Somewhat slightly off topic observation:
However, there is something to being able to do all that and handle the nuance of some solo or more intimate pieces of music as well. I think a great majority of systems struggle with parts of what you mentioned above. However, I've listen to some systems that have been tuned through enormous effort to handle the large scale stuff fairly well but even those systems can sometimes fall somewhat flat on the more intimately nuanced music. Then again the opposite can be said for systems tuned to handle intimately nuanced music. That quest for balance is not an easy one to accomplish especially if your music tastes are all over the map.

Dre

Johnny Vinyl · Jun 20, 2013

Other than a few friends with whom I get together about 4 times a year on a rotating basis (last time was at my place), the people that come here and ask to hear something aren't audiophiles or even music fans to the degree we are. They might have a HT setup, but the emphasis is on movies and they play music only because they can. So it doesn't really matter to them (or to me) what gets played on my system as anything I play will sound 100 times better than what they are used to.

jazdoc · Jun 20, 2013

Groucho said:
It seems to me that the huge difference between a really good system and the run of the mill, is its ability to maintain the sound of, and separation between, instruments, unaffected by volume or signal. Second is the ability to produce extended bass that is not just a home-theatre style rumble.

As such, I don't think that jazz or Pink Floyd is going to amaze anyone as much as some big orchestral stuff with its huge dynamic range and broad stereo image with individual instruments spread across it (not just pan-potted). So first I would play a track something like this:
http://open.spotify.com/track/0F0nvduoPIDIplzkGY3Rfw
(Korngold: Between Two Worlds:The World at War/The Next World/The Blitz in London/The Ship from An Introduction to Entarte Musik)

If your system can reproduce a live-sounding rock track in your living room at realistic levels, that's going to impress anyone. Such as this excellent track by Neil Young and Crazy horse (that even sounds great in 16/44.1 kHz ):
http://open.spotify.com/track/72DgEGVM9ezqKOB0Kxo2wV
(Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Carmichael from Greendale)

Synthetic sounds can go beyond 'natural' and make good demos of a system. Here's an amazing track that combines overpoweringly-deep bass and ear-tickling stereo analogue synth sounds:
http://open.spotify.com/track/1Pz0pTjKwlM52IdWZU4s2K
(Goldfrapp: Crystalline Green from Black Cherry)

My nod to jazz would be something like this which has got quite a hard dynamic edge tempered with rich, resonant bass and features just a few instruments recorded cleanly with space between them:
http://open.spotify.com/track/17uPeGmP6DrxfIRcNy9067
(Bad Plus: 1979 Semi-Finalist from Give)

Finally a crowd-pleaser that sounds fantastic on a larger system particularly because of the deep bass, open space and virtuoso production:
http://open.spotify.com/track/4veRrJjAXnJi95hlJvQUzc
(Grace Jones: Slave to the Rhythm from Tracks in Private Life - The Compass Years)

You have great taste in music my friend

!

LL21 · Jun 20, 2013

Rutter's Pie Jesu (Reference Recordings - Professor Johnson)...that organ combined with the chorus is breathtaking.

After that, pretty much whatever music I've got which they know...usually they are surprised at how much more they hear which they've never heard before...thus, its not infrequent for visitors to ask if it's actually a different version of the song.

Phelonious Ponk · Jun 20, 2013

Frankly, I find that most people aren't interested and listen only to be polite. Musicians sometimes care, but not that much. But that's OK. I'm content to enjoy it myself.

Tim

Dre_J · Jun 20, 2013

Phelonious Ponk said:
Frankly, I find that most people aren't interested and listen only to be polite. Musicians sometimes care, but not that much. But that's OK. I'm content to enjoy it myself.

Tim

While I can agree with some of this assessment in general...

This thread is really meant for us to mention the music we play for listeners that are interested.

If a casual visitor is at the house that didn't come for music purposes, the system isn't running and I'm not pushing, asking, or nudging them to listen.

This thread is only meant for when we have purpose visits or truly curious visitors. I'd never "push" the system on someone.

With that being said, do you have purpose visitors that come to listen to music and/or your latest system adaptations? If so and they ask you to show what the system does, do you have those music choices on standby? If not, that's fine. But that was my intent with this thread in that context.

I didn't mean to confuse you into thinking or suggest it was for some other reason. Sorry.

Dre

Phelonious Ponk · Jun 20, 2013

Dre_J said:
While I can agree with some of this assessment in general...

This thread is really meant for us to mention the music we play for listeners that are interested.

If a casual visitor is at the house that didn't come for music purposes, the system isn't running and I'm not pushing, asking, or nudging them to listen.

This thread is only meant for when we have purpose visits or truly curious visitors. I'd never "push" the system on someone.

With that being said, do you have purpose visitors that come to listen to music and/or your latest system adaptations? If so and they ask you to show what the system does, do you have those music choices on standby? If not, that's fine. But that was my intent with this thread in that context.

I didn't mean to confuse you into thinking or suggest it was for some other reason. Sorry.

Dre

A couple of times. I don't belong to any audio clubs. Most of my personal friends are musicians, and music lovers don't come any more focused or passionate, but there are surprisingly few audiophiles in that club. I did have a guy over here last year who was interested in active monitors; he brought his own music, mostly well-recorded classic rock -- Steely Dan, Dire Straights, that sort of thing.

P

Dre_J · Jun 20, 2013

Phelonious Ponk said:
A couple of times. I don't belong to any audio clubs. Most of my personal friends are musicians, and music lovers don't come any more focused or passionate, but there are surprisingly few audiophiles in that club. I did have a guy over here last year who was interested in active monitors; he brought his own music, mostly well-recorded classic rock -- Steely Dan, Dire Straights, that sort of thing.

P

Thanks for the reply.

Dre

How do you "flex" or show nuance of your music system for visitors?

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