[95Dyna]

Many cuts rotate in and out of my list but here are some mainstays:

Oregon: "Leather Cats" for bass and wild dynamics that are all over the place. Chesky SACD

Valery Joyce and her arrangement on Chesky records of Jimi Hendrix' "Little Wing" for female vocal.

Couunt Basie with Ray Brown and Louie Belson on the 180g 45 RPM reissue of the 1973 "Count Basie 3 Kansas City" for jazz trio, bass and piano.  Pablo Recordds

The English Chamber Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim on EMI CD:  Mozart's Piano Concerto # 21 for orchestral subtleties, dynamics and piano

Diana Krall's arrangement of Tom Waits' "Temptation" from "The Girl in the Other Room".  Bass (Christian McBride), female vocal, jazz guitar (Anthony Wilson) 

The Afro-Celt Sound System "Whirly Wheel".  Huge dynamics and pounding percussive rhythms-great test for how well your amp(s) are controlling your speakers.  I can easily get the LED's blinking red on my 7B SST2's with this one.  In fairness to the 7's, my  speakers are dipping to .8 ohms at several spots in this recording.

Al DiMeola from his 20002 SACD "Flesh on Flesh" an electro-funk arrangement off Chick Corea's "Senor Mouse"  Just a really fun arrangement to listen to.

[HsvHeelFan]

My reference recordings are:

1.   Telarc CD - Cincinnati Pops - Erich Kunzel - Time Warp  track #3 Theme from Battlestar Gallactica

2.  Telarc CD - Cincinnati Pops - Erich Kunzel - Time Warp  track   #4 - Love Theme from Superman

3.  Telarc CD -  Cleveland Orchestra - Mussorsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition"

4.  Alan Parsons Project - I Robot   track #1 - I Robot

5.  Alan Parsons Project - I Robot   track #3 - Some other time


The Pictures and I Robot CD's, I purchased when I picked up my first CD player in March of 1984.  I've always used them as 2 of my benchmark CD's.

I generally only change 1 component at a time in my system.  The only time I've made a 2 component change is when I went from an Integrated Amp to my Parasound PH-850/Bryston 4B-St pre-amp/amp combo.

HsvHeelFan

[drummermitchell]

I have two:Best of Sade,simplicity at it's best and great bottom end(nice and meaty).
                :Donald Fagen: Night Fly(same as above)both recorded very well and I believe Night been  on                LP for quite some time,both CD and LP are great for meat and potato rhythms with excellent separation.

[veloceleste]

I made an "audition cd" many years ago that I still use today to evaluate equipment.  Some jazz, classical, rock, male and female vocal comprise the disc.  Even though I thought I knew every last sound and note on this disc, I was surprised to hear something on a track that I never heard before--or that never left an impression on me before--just the last time I auditioned a pair of speakers I recently purchased and refurbished.  I was amazed that I didn't recall hearing what I heard and I listen to this disc frequently!

[jimdgoulding]

Man, I typed in seven albums- favorites of mine for demoing- and it all suddenly disappeared!  Oh well, mostly pretty rare classical records from the 70's you probably would'nt know anyway.  So, I'll just throw in "Rolene" from Mink de Ville's Return to Magenta (Capitol).  Cheers