CD's you bring for auditioning

Rostropovich on Teldec with a chamber ensemble (I'm too lazy to go to my basement and tell you the exact details) playing a Vivaldi piece. Always start with that. A couple of bars into it the music drops a couple of octaves, and that moment is when amplifiers get their soul exposed for the world to see. Dynamics, microdynamics, ability to raise current as speaker impedance drops, attack and decay, all tested at once. Also Roger Waters' Amused to Death for soundstaging, Vienna Teng for vocal naturality, Massive Attack or Thievery Corporation for bass, Nils Peter Molvaer for range and detail, etc.

I just bring a CD with an approximated impulse response. I can do the Fourier transformation in my head.

If I want to understand the effect of the room, I bring a 5-second glide tone.

Between these 2 tracks, I have a pretty good understanding of what is going on. Any other approach is a waste of time.

Grateful Dead--Reckoning (acoustic), any other live electric recording that I'm fond of

Pink Floyd--Wish You Were Here

Shirley Bassey--Live At Carnegie Hall, Something

It is more important to me how the equipment sounds on stuff I play a lot rather than on "test" CD's.

I agree with Tpsonic, the Mapleshade stuff is very revealing. One of my favorites is Kendra Shank's Afterglow recording.

The first two cuts, Almost Blue and Photograph are excellent for testing. Gives you that "I'm in the room with you" presentation. On a good system this can give you those goosebumps.

For example, the energy coming from Kendra's voice on Almost Blue can be too much for my CJ Premier 11a amp. On Photograph, the music flies outside-of-the-box into parts unknown.

Should only be the one's that are the top five in your collection. This way, you will know what differences are being produced. One of my favorites is the sound track of the motion picture 'The Mission'. I also have the DVD and I use that too. The range of the music on the latter disc's is unbelievable.