2-Channel Demo Music for Younger Generations

Tom Petty.....Mojo or most anything.
Counting Crows August and Everthing After
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
Zac Brown The Foundation for country lovers
Alice in Chains Unplugged
Death cab for...has a great into on "Iwill possess your heart"
Matchbox Twenty "Back to good" from Yourself or someone like you
those are a few off top of head.

Beck--Sea Change
Radiohead -- OK Computer, esp "No Alarms No Surprises"
Sigur Ros
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
Talking Heads--stop making sense

as suggested above definitely check out Beck/Sea Change and Alice In Chains Unplugged. Looks like most of the stuff you're considering is not too heavy so I'll throw in Ben Harper as well. Slightly heavier I'd go with Foo Fighters and Tool.

Vampire Weekend, Belle and Sebastien, Medeski Martin & Wood, John Scofield. Lots of albums from them demo well without being too unapproachable. I always encouraged customers to bring some of their own favorites too.

You gotta add Tom Petty ...High in the morning from MOJO

I'd listen to that CD. :-)

Very good choices. Well done. Even a geezer like me could appreciate that mix.

For some who like more metal Godsmaks "Voodoo" sounds great.

Train- You already know. Crank it from 55 seconds in.
Maroon 5- Infatuation
Matchbox Twenty- Last Beautiful Girl
These next two aren't really intended for young people, but ones where there really is some fantastic musicianship.
Lyle Lovett- Tickle Toe(Hate this album, this song is the only good one)
Steely Dan-Aja

make me do anything you want..alannah !

Some newer artists/albums that make good demo material (well recorded, not over compressed, dynamic content):

John Bulter Trio - Grand National or April Uprising

Guster - Ganging Up On the Sun

Soulive - No Place Like Soul

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave - Backatown

Sound Tribe Sector 9 - Peaceblaster

Pendulum - Immersion

Pearl Jam - Ten, Biaural or Yellow Ledbetter (single)

Muse - The Resistance

Jack's Mannequin - The Glass Passenger

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Better Than Ezra - Before the Robots ( A Lifetime is a good track for demo)

Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business / The Beginning

The Black Keys - Attack and Release / Brothers

Coldplay - Viva La Vida (great demo track)

Dispatch - Bang Bang ('The General' is a good demo)

Incubus - Aqueous Transmission (good demo)

Vampire Weekend - Contra

Innerpartysystem - Innerpartysystem

I would throw some Audioslave in there.

xianthax - half your list is comprised of sad poster children examples of fidelity abusive over-compression & dynamic limiting; Coldplay, Black Eyed Peas, Arcade Fire, Muse & Vampire Weekend, for example. I wish it weren't so, but that's the nature of most "modern" pop/rock music releases these days.

Audioslave is another miserable example of this. Maroon 5 would probably quality too. Heck, half of the suggestions throughout this thread, really.

I'm not saying you couldn't still manage to enjoy these as a fan, but for demonstration purposes, they are all far from being knock-your-socks-off sonically impressive, especially when played at higher volume.

Plug in your favorite artists and see for yourself:
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Then again, it's probably best to use such marginal examples for speaker demonstration purposes, since the majority of the releases favored by "the kids" are likewise sonically stifled.. whatever makes these types of examples still manage to sound reasonably good is probably their speaker winner.

Cruel-- I find that link really interesting. I was particularly looking at Radiohead as I have been waiting, and praying, for high-res Radiohead releases for years. I downloaded the 24 bit FLAC for King of Limbs and it sounds amazing. The imaging and soundstage are a big difference compared to my OK Computer CD. However, the chart on that site would indicate that I am crazy as OK Computer has a much higher "score"

The FLAC download is not a small difference versus the imaging / soundstage of my OK Computer CD. It Is quite dramatic.

I am confused now. There must be more to consider then what is on that table

Setup: OPPO 95-->Parasound-->Vandersteen 2.1

I should say, there must be more variables to consider.

Separation by genres is the right way to go but two CDs is not enough. What about country, trance, and all the others with each on their own CD? Where are you going to get the music from?

The examples you listed all fall into the 'transition' section for the tracks i would use with the exception of the black eyed peas which i don't consider 'terrible' and a black eyed peas track is not something i would ever consider using to demonstrate dynamic range in the first place.

Frankly looking over the list sorted highest DR i'm not convinced I would rely on this a metric at all. There is a ton of garbage with really high DR.

Dynamic range is only one capability of a speaker system that would be covered in a comprehensive demonstration. Many types of music don't even lend themselves to high dynamic ranges in the first place.

Meh... Just put on one of the audiophile demo CDs full of recordings from nobody anyone has ever heard of from Chesky or something. Then (and this is the clever bit) when they inevitably pass out during the crooning of Gloriana Penelope performs "Spanish Burbank" you steal their wallet.

I was thinking the same and while there is some great music for sure it aint gonna help sell based on quality of sound. Its good to have customers understand what most music will perhaps sound like its important to show truely quality samples of what a system is capable of delivering so my focus was on popular but great soundinb tracks.

Well, a couple things. First, OK Computer only received solid scores for the two vinyl versions in that database. On CD, however, it received a score of "7" on that scale. So that's only one higher than the "6" King of Limbs received.. hardly any difference between the two in that similar context.

Plus, while I haven't heard anything off of King of Limbs yet, I assume it's closer to In Rainbows in overall sound or style than OK Computer. If that is the case, then that wouldn't really surprise me that you prefer the sound of their latest.

I tend to not notice heavier compression/dynamically limiting as much when it comes to more syncopated, percussive and sparser sounding music. When you get to music with chunkier power chord guitars (harder rock) or music that is really busy with a ton going on in the mix and vocals that are competing for your attention with equally volume prominent instrumentation.. that's when things fall apart faster. OK Computer tends to be closer to the latter than the former and therefore more prone to the deleterious effects of aggressively limited mastering.

So even if two albums share the same score on that scale, there are mitigating factors which could easily make one sound better than another. Consider the scale as a solid thumbnail sketch, not something that completely sums up the sound quality of any given release.

A bit off topic, but I just read about how the Foo Fighters recorded their recent album on analog tape in Dave Grohl's garage, without any computers or software. When they were done they chopped up the master tapes into thousands of pieces and inserted it into copies of the new disc to be sold in stores.

http://jackseattle.radio.com/2011/04...light-to-fans/

The purpose isn't strictly to demonstrate great dynamic range of either the music or the speakers being auditioned, per se. What examples of severely limited dynamics might suggest, however, is real world practical limitations of playing some of the worst examples here, especially at higher volume. You might hear some ugly distortion from digital clipping, for example. I've got enough music where that happens.. I go to crank a song and I have to back the volume down a bit because it just sounds too congested. Worst case, the music begins distorting. Disappointing when you love the music and you just want to "crank it up".


Wouldn't necessarily disagree there. Not making the argument here that anyone should listen to only well-recorded and mastered music. Just lamenting the fact that a lot of the music I like doesn't get nearly the same care as it should.


Very true. Sort of gets back to how I ended my previous post. Some types of music are intended to have a more limited dynamic range and so a lower score on the dynamic range scale might not be a big issue at all. But that can usually be better accomplished in the recording and mixing stage (and not some end-of-the-line final mastering process where many releases seemingly get subjected to the same generic, compression-limitation treatment).

Despite what Grohl states below (quoted from your link), if the DR scale is to be believed, they sure did a sucky job.

Going "all analog" and using no computers can be useful in terms of helping avoid some of the common pitfalls on the way to releasing a new music project, but it can be quickly negated if care isn't taken until the very end of the process. Appears to be what befell their new one, unfortunately.

Whatever initial higher sound quality it may started out with was easily compromised by some simple keystroke or knob turn at the end of the line when some global generic final mastering treatment was applied. Based upon the numbers, it appears their new one is going to sound as compressed and loud as nearly every other modern pop/rock release. Maybe even the worst of their career, in that respect. Job (not) well done.

It would seem to me that your discussing two separate issues, once being compressed dynamic range and one being poor mastering allows clipping in the final product.

I certainly see no reason that a compressed dynamic range would result in clipping, digital or analog, unless the payback signal chain isn't constructed to handle a full scale input.

Tool's Lateralus, once you get beyond the roaring thunder actually has some real detail behind the front. BUT, I would recommend making sure the listener was a fan. I really notice it on my AKG 702 cans, but also became very aware when listening to my Cambridge 640 amp and Royd Minstrel speakers. Source was ALAC ripped to Mac Pro tower, streamed to Squeezebox Touch, co-ax out to Beresford Caiman DAC, to Cambridge.

I have heard many suggest NIN has some audiophile quality mixes, but I can't recall the name of the particular album that is always cited. I'll try to search some more.

Edit to add:

You can rip CD's to lossless (FLAC or ALAC), compose the demo CD and rip back to CD in WAVE/AIFF for the demo disk. This would create a bit-perfect copy of the original. As long as you/the store own the CD's outright, you should not have any copyright issues, but I am not a lawyer, so do your own due diligence.

For demo of hi resolution FLAC, get a Squeezebox Touch (Best Buy is a Logitech dealer), store the files on a USB stick and play via Touch. The DAC in the Touch should be fine for using RCA out to the demo rec/amp. Or if the rec/amp has a built in DAC, use optical out or co-ax digital out to the receiver DAC.

I would not demo anything approaching high end equipment with lossy files. Even 320 kbps.