Some other staples (read old skool lol) of the industry for car audio evalulation:

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Jennifer Warnes - Famous Blue Raincoat
Eagles - Hell Freezes Over

And I like Bare Naked Ladies - Gordon too. The Tracy Chapman is a nice one.

There was some in depth discussion on Carsound that todays CD recordings may not be of the same caliber and quality they used to be back when CD was more of an upper-level means of recording. Too much compression and such. Those CDs I mentioned are all from the early 90s or 80s.

 

^^^^ I use all of those! I also like Dave Matthews Band - Crash and Amanda Marshall. But the ultimate cd I have "made" the most from for car and home is Diana Krall Love Scenes.

 

I am listening more and more to DMB lately. I think I'll have to pick up a CD of his. I used to use Amanda Marshalls self-titled album (her first big one) to set up my car before a show. My debut show with the Avenger I cleaned up nicely (1st place Pro 151-300w, Best Sound Quality - Pro, and Highest SPL - Pro) and I "tuned" (car had no eq or processing other than the 3-way elec. xover and bass/treble on the amps and deck) the car with that disc prior to the show [img]graemlins/thumb.gif[/img]

Correction: The Tracy Chapman disc I was referring to was the one with Fast Car on it.

 

The self-tited Tracy Chapman is still the best of hers.

One of my favorite cds to use is Jeff Buckley "Grace" -- first track has great vocals and percussion (especially the kick drum and cymbals 45 secs in).

Another one I like is the LA's self-tited cd (There She Goes) -- I use it more for it's "retro" beatles sound.

One last one you may not have heard of is Ephram Lewis' debut CD. "Drowning in your Eyes" has nice vocals, horns and soundstaging.

 

A short recommended list:

http://www.audionut.com/_page_3.html

A few "audiophile quality" companies:

http://www.chesky.com/
http://www.referencerecordings.com/
http://www.dorian.com/store/main.mvc

A "budget" high quality company:

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/index.php

Enjoy!

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