Favorite PA Demo Songs?

[channelaudio]

Hello all, and happy holidays!

I'm interested in what tracks you all are using to demo PA systems and familiarize yourself with a system you're about to engineer on.

I understand the idea is to use songs you are very familiar with this way you can quickly determine certain characteristics of a new system. I realize that this is not a replacement for measurement.

Here are a few tracks on my current playlist:

Fragments of Time - Daft Punk
Bad Blood - NAO
Pulp Culture - Thomas Dolby
Rainmaker - Keb' Mo'
Africa - Toto
Higher Love - Steve Winwood
Dreams - Fleetwood Mac
Do It Again - Steely Dan

[Bob Bickerton]

Actually these days I don’t use measurements to tune systems, just my ears.

There are two tracks I use most of the time, both from Herbie Hancock’s Gershwin World album. ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ and ‘The Man I love’.

They’re very well recorded and have a good frequency range, but most importantly have ‘space’ to hear the different elements clearly.

The specific questions I ask myself are:

Is the acoustic bass in It Ain’t sounding natural, not overblown?
Is the edgy trumpet halfway through It Ain’t controlled?
Can I improve the piano sound in It Ain’t?
How natural is the vocal sound in The Man I Love?
Is the kick subtly audible in the Man I Love?

These as well as an overall assessment of the sound.

Bob

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Measurement and listening together, works every time. Only way to get around cognitive bias.

I like:
Joe Jackson I'm the Man, especially "It's Different for Girls".

Pulp Culture - Thomas Dolby

I would just play the whole album
Remastered Talk Talk The Colour of Spring- if it doesn't sound beautiful there's something wrong. Perfect (maybe too perfect) snares. Will expose any vocal sibilance issues.

Glad you've picked that Steely Dan track, and not the cliché The Night Fly. A distinct lack of bass on that, and the upper mids in the snares are verging on hard.

[Albatross]

There was a drummer chap who used to tread these boards who had toured the world with the big-rigs with probably the most successful rock singer in the world, and he told us that the sound man used Peter Gabriel's 'sledgehammer'.

[Dave B]

Ah memories ... in my old tech'ing days, the sound guy used to test every system with "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil. Every system. Every time. Every tour.

I mean, it's a good song but there are limits

For test listening, I use Yello's "Baby" album as it is stunningly clear sounding and lots of fun.

[Mike Stranks]

More or less retired now, but I always used a few tracks from the Court and Parsons Test CD:

Spoken Voice
Solo Piano
Full drum kit

That got me 95% of the way there...

Polishing (still from the same CD):

The Race by Yello
The strings and cellos from 'Seasons of Our Lives'
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

I knew those tracks so well that 10 seconds of the Spoken Voice had me tweaking the appropriate faders on the graphic... the rest was fine-tuning really.

[Music Wolf]

I always used a few tracks from the Court and Parsons Test CD:

Spoken Voice
Solo Piano
Full drum kit

That got me 95% of the way there...

Polishing (still from the same CD):

The Race by Yello
The strings and cellos from 'Seasons of Our Lives'
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

An excellent CD that has served me well. I was using it a couple of weeks ago to help me pin down a problem on my DXR12s.

[resistorman]

I use New York Voices Sing the Songs of Paul Simon.

[Drew Stephenson]

One i like to use is Blood Buzz Ohio by The National (though any of their catalogue would probably do), it's very middy and quickly becomes muddy if you're not careful. Useful for male voice acts.

[Sam Spoons]

PA test songs :- Dixie Chicks "Ready To Run" and Skeleton Crew "Rock And Roll Dreams" They were a local blues band, sadly no more and have absolutely no internet presence. The CD was called "Wood Wire and Skin", stripped back sound, guitar, bass, drums, keys, sax and vocals, beautifully recorded in Frog Lane Studio, Wigan IIRC. Not sure what I'll use to sort the studio out, both those of course and Kate Rusby for that voice, but any suggestions what else?

[Stef Andrews]

First song for me is always Killer by Seal. Followed by Back in Black. Between the two I'm pretty much set, although i usually only need Killer.

[resistorman]

Skeleton Crew "Rock And Roll Dreams" They were a local blues band, sadly no more and have absolutely no internet presence

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot’s house band is called the Skeleton Crew

[Sam Spoons]

There must be many others too, as there are dozens of bands already using my power trio's name "The Tree Fellers"