Perfect song to demo speaker setup.

For a rock song maybe this might work

"Money for Nothing" won the Grammy for the Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with a Vocal in 1985 at the 28th annual Grammy Awards

For nice bass, Blue man group Audio

Lyle Lovett - The Road to Ensanada

Very good bass on this track. The whole album is extremely well produced. Not my ideal type of music at first listen but if you listen to it on a good system, you will get sucked into it. You need the FLAC file or CD though...

I think a great song that has it all is Pink Floyd Pigs Three different ones. This song has it all, good guitar, drums, cymbals and good bass. It even sounds like a little cowbell thrown in. Really tests the highs and lows. It is an 11 minute song, so allot of change up. Pink Floyd the final cut is another good one. Good bass in this one.

What's YOUR perfect song? What one considers great you may never listen to. So, what do you listen to?

I take the following when I demo.

Soundgarden-Fell On Black Days
Dire Straits-Money For Nothing (remastered)
Pearl Jam-Jeremy (remastered)
Live-Lakani's Juice
Little Feat-Changin' Luck

If you listen to rock, you're not going to take Bach with you just as you're not going to take Steely Dan if you listen to Nicki Minaj.

That said, what's your genre? From there, a selection can be made.

When I want to demo my system or am giving a demo for customers I always play Glimpse Into the Future...Its done by a DJ Benzi and Diplo and they called the album mansions on the moon. Its not great for vocals but it sounds awesome on almost any kind of speaker. Also any ACDC blasted always does the trick.

Dream Theater-Images and Words
Daft Punk-Alive 2007-lots of nice low end
Us and Them, Symphonic Pink Floyd-2 members of Killing Joke wrote and produced it, using a guest conductor and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Scorn-Elipsis-great ambient dub remix cd of Mick Harris' music(former drummer for Napalm Death)
Download-The Eyes Of Stanley Pain-side project from Cevin Key of Skinny Puppy

If you are a fan of guitar music I would suggest taking a listen to Govi. Lots of instruments to pick out in the sound stage.

http://www.last.fm/music/Govi

for two channel i use the eagles' hotel california from the hell freezes over cd, the guitar, bass and voices really seem to demo well for me and i always take it along to try others' setup and for multichannel the dark side of the moon always get well received although the best IMO i have yet to hear them on is my brothers' krk monitors, would love to try some really hifi sets too some day

I have tried that app on the PS3. To be honest, it doesn't even come close to a proper uncompressed track.

You can stream FLAC files from your PC to the PS3. You just need to install the PS3 media server on your PC.

Check out "Do the whirlwind" by Architecture in Helsinki. Really cool in multichannel. "Why worry?" from Dire Straights Brothers in Arms SACD is good too!

Just a suggestion.

Sick puppies.... Live & Unplugged..... Pretender(acoustic)
Kalai..... Crows Feet..... She. Wicked song
Alice in chains...... MTV Unplugged..... Rooster

Elsa Raven - If you still believe

Try this: Bliss: Song for Olabi

It has all you need for a demo from deep bass to super highs.

Tool - Jimmy
Tool - Pushit

Both are pretty heavy on the lower midrange and can really test a smaller driver at good SPL.

Sean Olive likes Tracy Chapman - Fast Car because it's easy to tell tonal differences between speakers with this music.

Im keeping with the above suggestion....APC's ....thirteenth step CD

"The Noose" it starts off slowly and the crescendo starts to swell and nearing the mid way point it starts to really delivers tight powerfull accurate bass & Maynard vocals delivers as usual...I love this tune and the CD is pretty good too.

With this type of question, the suggestions you're gonna get are the types of music that the responders like. I've never heard of most of this stuff and doubt I'd be interested in it. That said, I like acoustic remixes of familiar music, they seem to take more care in the mastering and the presentation is not as "busy". I like to use Jagged Little Pill Acoustic - which is a studio remix and is an excellent presentation and 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged which is also very well done. Both offer female vocals, good bass and soundstage, as well as being songs that listeners can relate to. The Pretenders 'An Isle of View' is a live acoustic set that is wonderfully done.

Hurt-Summers Lost off the Vol.II album. Slow beginning with guitar and some water noises in the background, and slowly builds until it gets real fast and heavy, then back down again

This is one of my favorite albums/Live appearances of all time. I love the intro and Brother. This is one night I wish I could have attended.

Ten years of godsmack cd comes with a dvd titled
"an evening with godsmack" house of blues las vegas
it is an accoustical masterpiece. amazing.


Eagles "hell freezes over" is reference quality as is
Eagles "Farewell Tour" live from melbourne

personal favorites are mtv unplugged
alice in chains and nirvana

all 5 of those are up there with "The Best"
and give the feeling of being there live.
For me that is what it is all about.
enjoy
WVchris

I was fishing through some music and played Styx Mr Roboto. Other than the song itself, it sounds fantastic through my system. It woke up my RX8's to a level I have never heard them. Crisp detailed highs and nice tight bass, sounded great. Certainly a song to add to the list.

Perpetual Groove - Teakwood Betz
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OsYrBZqucpE
Cool song, lots of different stuff, good LR panning. Had this on a demo cd I took with me last time I auditioned speakers. Guy said he'd give me $10 off if I left the cd. Didn't buy anything but left it anyway. It's got acoustic, rap, classical, lots of $hit.

+1 I have the Blue Man group BluRay and it sounds great!!

Chris Jones - Long After You're Gone
Alice In Chains - Nutshell, Rooster,...anything on this album basically (MTV Unplugged Version!!)
Ryan Adams - Come Pick Me Up or most from his Ashes & Fire album
Wayman Tisdale - If You Want Me To Stay
Alan Taylor - Colour To The Moon (rich, deep vocals)

lemme know if you want more

"Spanish Harlem" - Rebecca Pidgeon

Burl Ives "Silver and Gold"
Tiny Tim "tip toe through the tulips" lots of highs in that one