Audition Music Recommendations

[admin_exported]

We are going to audition a Cyrus 8XPd & 8CDSE on the weekend with Spendor A5s, B&W CM7s & PMC GB1i. Whilst we have a large collection of music and already have selected our favourite CDs to take, we wonder if there are particular tracks which test elements of a system without using a "Test Disc". Any thoughts or recommendations ...

 

[Anonymous]

Hi!

just bring the tracks that u most familiar with.

Max

 

[Anonymous]

And let us know your impressions!

 

[Dave_]

Agree, you need to listen to tracks you're very familiar with.

 

[survivor]

Don`t know what sort of music you like but I can recommend the instrumental title track on Asia`s `Arena` album.It`s a great piece of music for testing a system. If you get hold of the track before the weekend you can play it through a few times to familiarise yourself with it.

 

[SteveR750]

I alwaystake 4 CD's, al of which I know very well having listened to them many many time. 2 of them are well recorded and sound fantastic even on a cheap system, the other 2 are nasty horrible compressed artificial recordings. There are other subtleties of each individual CD but between them they will tell me all I need to know.

 

[Don Jr]

I would bring Peter Gabriel's ' Shaking the Tree ' CD, and crank ' I Have The Touch ' so loud that it gives people on the street a headache. That tune can part your hair for you if listen to it on a good kit. I actually went bald back in the late 90's from that song.

 

[ALTANPSX]

Chesky Records, Guide to critical listening

You will find all you need in this cd. Before every song, a narrator tells you, which details you'll hear in a good system.

 

[Anonymous]

Spent 4 hours in Audio T today ... the main discs we decided on were

• Kings of Leon - Only By The Night - demo track "Closer"
• Eva Cassidy - Songbird - demo track "Fields Of Gold"
• Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon - demo track "Time"

We also took along another half a dozen CDs but focussed on these whilst swapping components and interconnects. We were auditioning the Cyrus 8XPd and 8CDSE [but connected digitally to emulate the XtSE which we are planning to buy.]

We also compared against a Naim X5/CD5 as a sanity check.

As to speakers we had some surprises ...

• Rega R5 - we loved these speakers. These worked really well with the Cyrus kit and apart from one rock track we chose were faultless.
• Dynaudio - Focus 110 on Partington SuperDs - sadly a huge disappointment compared with the Rega. We just didn't get on with the Dynaudios.
• Totem - Arro: we auditioned these as well as the Stfafs after we heard our first choice. The Arros were very disappointing and the clarity could have been so much better in the middle. There was something about the Stfafs we just didn't like.

We had the CD & Amp connected with Chord Digital Signature and drove the speakers initially with Chord Epic Super Twin and then swapped to Townsend Isolda - wow! Budget now looking scary. Things got very interesting as we then tried out the 8XPd with the Qx DAC. Again wow! Budget blown!

Perhaps the most surprising part was the speaker choice - Totem Rainmakers on the Partington SuperDs. This seemed not only to be able to control what we fired at it but filled the room beautifully even when not cranked. Some much for the initial budget I wrote about recently. We also ordered a 50" Kuro and are trying to decide on a stand.

Audio T were brilliant and if I have any complaints, it wouldn't be about the staff, nor the negotiations, nor the price [although could have been better] ... .. ... it was the coffee, man am I fussy

A great afternoon, if you can have such things in Reading.

 

[malthus80]

Chris Rea road to hell. Shines on high end kit. If you have any naim demo discs they are perfectly mastered.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks malthus - they had them there, but we didn't use them. System is ordered now - so no going back!