What album do you test stereos with?

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by verbatim
Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon, especially Time, Money, and Great Gig in the Sky. They all have really deep bass and thick layering, so if you here everything, its good speakers.

Good answer. The last time I did a stereo test with vinyl was upon moving into my first house, as serious stereo testing in the previous apartment would have been dangerous to my lease.

My copy of Dark Side was rather worn by then--it had been purchased *before* the Dark Side tour. I had the good fortune to see Floyd in Philly twice: once at the Spectrum for the Dark Side tour, and once before that at the Tower for the Meddle tour--up close and personal !

So I used "Wish You Were Here" instead. Mucho dynamic range. Serious bass. Appreciable high-end.

There was a time when tracks that had bass lines near the resonant frequency of my laser reflector got a lot of play. The reflector was a first-surface mirror glued to a latex sheet stretched loosely on an embroidery hoop. Rick Wakeman's "Six Wives" worked pretty well on that. Any random vis plugin for XMMS/WinAmp gives you a better light show these days. But that was then, this is now.

Also good as test data are some of the tracks on Beaver and Krause albums "Gandharva" and "In a Wild Sanctuary".

"By Your Grace" from Ghandarva will give the stereo imaging a good workout. Gerry Mulligan--baritone sax, Bud Shank --flute and tenor sax, Gail Laughton--harps (two harps at once!), Howard Roberts-guitar, Paul Beaver--pipe organ and Bernard Krause--Moog synth, recorded in Grace Catherdral--a space 150 feet long and 90 feet high, with a seven-second decay time. 12 mikes fed a 16-track recorder; heady stuff for 1971. The musicians having hand-held instrumens walked though the space while recording.

Serious nostalgia/trivia points to those who know what B&C's *first* album was.