<p>It's also worth mentioning that I have about 60-70 tracks in my core referencing collection at any given time, so now I'll just pick out the ones I most use for testing monitors. That said, all of my references add to my impressions of what a monitoring system can do, because if I hear one of them through a new monitoring system and it suddenly seems a bit unfamiliar, then I'm immediately suspicious that something's amiss. (I'm sure I'll post more about other specific tracks in my reference collection in due course too, so it's not that I'm trying to conceal some 'special sauce'!) In a similar vein, I almost always check over some of my most recent recording/mixing work while evaluating monitors, because I'll always be very familiar with the intricacies of that material from having worked on it for hours, so balance misrepresentations in particular will again tend to become more obvious.</p>

<p>Anyway, without further ado, here are some of the specific reference tracks I use, grouped according to the main things I'm looking for when auditioning them.</p>

<h2>General Quality/Balance</h2>

<p>This is the biggest area of concern for me: firstly, do productions I know sound good actually sound good on the test system; and secondly (and more importantly) does the balance between the instruments in each production come across through the test monitors the way I've come to expect. Foremost amongst these 'quality' references is probably Sting's 'All Four Seasons' -- super-producer Hugh Padgham on top form with the greatest musicians, rooms, and recording kit money can buy. This is also a great bass reference (of which more below), so I've been using it for demonstration purposes for years, hence my deep familiarity with it. There are plenty of other songs I turn to in addition, though. Gabrielle's 'Independence Day' is one I've been a fan of for years, although the vocal's a touch strident, while Solomon Burke's 'Don't Give Up On Me' and Crowded House's 'Four Seasons In One Day' both have lovely vocal sounds that are very revealing (as vocals tend to be) of tonal colorations. For finer points of balance, it's difficult to beat Alison Krauss's 'Paper Airplane', one of Mike Shipley's exquisitely controlled productions (you may know him better as the right-hand man of Robert 'Mutt' Lange for many years) -- if anything's out of kilter there, then you can be pretty sure it's the monitors, not the music!</p>

<p>In a slightly heavier vein I tend to turn to Rage Against The Machine's 'Fistful Of Steel' (arguably my favourite Andy Wallace mix), AC/DC's 'Back In Black', and almost anything from Dr Dre's album <i>2001</i>, although usually 'The Watcher' is top of the list there. From a more Electropop/EDM angle, I tend to chop and change a bit more, depending upon what I've recently been listening to for <i>Sound On Sound</i> Magazine's 'The Mix Review' column (again, because I'm most familiar with those tracks), but I do find myself returning to things like The Propellerheads's 'Oh Yeah', Britney Spears's' 'Toxic', Cascada's 'Evacuate The Dancefloor', Craig David's 'Seven Days', and Kesha's 'Your Love Is My Drug'. For a more acoustic slant I often pull up Yo-Yo Ma's 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions', which is an absolute masterpiece that was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Richard King (the only living engineer to have won both the classical and non-classical Best Engineering Grammies) -- who, incidentally is just about to release a recording book on Focal Press, which I'm super-excited about! Finally, I often have a listen to a couple of BBC spoken-word recordings which were originally released (I think) on the old Soundcheck CD series -- one of them's a snatch of the shipping forecast! Because us humans are so sensitive to speech, it really tends to highlight unnatural tonal colorations in any playback system.</p>

<h2>Bass</h2>

<p>The balance, reach, and speed of the low end is such a critical issue in project-studio monitoring that I spend quite a lot of time making up my mind about what I think about it with any new set of monitors. As far as basic balance goes, the Britney Spears track I already mentioned is a good foil to Eminem's 'Square Dance', because the former is very economical with its low end, achieving a sense of bass mostly by clever upper-bass/lower-midrange illusion, whereas the latter has more real sub-80Hz low end than I'd normally ever want to put in a mix of my own -- so both are useful 'end-stop' references for bass balance. Sarah McLachlan's 'I Love You' is as good a musical test of extreme reach as any, as the lowest tone will frequently drop off the bottom of small monitors, and the verse of Skunk Anansie's 'Infidelity' also has gentle subbass kick-drum frequencies rolling along underneath the bass guitar which are rarely resolved audibly by project-studio systems. The latter production is also excellent for flagging up 'one-note bass', because of its meandering, LF-heavy bass line. More general bass balance issues are usually laid bare by Sting's 'All Four Seasons' too, which is the reason I've so often used it for workshop demonstrations! And I occasionally run a set of low-frequency sine tones through the system if there's something specific with the LF response I'm concerned about.</p>

<p>Another vital (and often underrated) issue for me, though, is the 'speed' of the bass, in other words how quickly bass/kick notes seem to start and stop, how much low-frequency detail is audible in the gaps between bass events, and whether the low end seems to lag at all behind the mid-range. My two favourite tracks for this are Finlay Quaye's 'Even After All' and Michael Jackson's 'Invincible', both of which have a tremendous amount of detail at the low end, and frequently sound a touch sluggish and indistinct on less good project-studio monitors.</p>

<h2>Speed/Detail/Depth</h2>

<p>The issue of 'speed' isn't just about the bass, though, and the percussion of the aforementioned Michael Jackson, Rage Against The Machine, and Dr Dre references is very revealing of transient rounding, as is Katy Perry's 'Hot N Cold' -- which should be borderline painful to listen to on a decent system! Something that usually seems to be twinned with 'speed' for me, though, is depth and detail, and for testing how well a set of speakers resolves those elements I usually turn to that Yo Yo Ma production above, as well as to Outkast's 'Bowtie' (masses of little details in the background to pick out) and Keane's 'She Has No Time' (see if you can hear all of Spike Stent's little delay-effect repeats).</p>

<p>If a pair of speakers give a good sense of speed and detail, then they'll usually also have decent imaging and depth presentation, by which I mean that you can locate sound sources accurately and stably in the stereo panorama where appropriate, and also determine how far sounds appear to be from you, the listener. This is a where a purist XY stereo recording can really pay dividends, and I've long used Sheffield Labs' minimalist recording of Stravinsky's 'Firebird' suite for this purpose. I'm classically trained myself (and have played in many orchestras as a violininst/violist), which means I have a pretty clear impression of where I expect everything to come from in an orchestral layout, so I just close my eyes and listen for anything that doesn't seem right. The Spike Stent mix (or his more recent one for Coldplay's 'Magic') is particularly good for evaluating depth presentation, because of the intricate and subtle use of mix effects, but I often reach for Kanye West's 'Breathe In, Breathe Out' as well, a track so brutally dry that it sounds almost claustrophobic if the playback system and acoustic environment are tightly-enough controlled in the time domain.</p>

<h2>Mix Tonality &amp; Referencing</h2>

<p>A general idea of what the speakers' overall spectral balance is like will tend to dawn on me naturally as I listen to all my different references and switch back and forth to other monitors in my room, but there's another aspect of mix tonality I test for specifically: the ability to reveal differences in mix tonality when A/B-ing tracks at the mix-referencing stage. After all, referencing is the bedrock of achieving professional results in a project studio as far as I'm concerned, so speakers that won't deliver in this department aren't fit for mixing purposes, in my view. Going over recent work of my own (which I always do in relation to commercial references) helps here, but I also have a few tracks that I come back to again and again. Madonna's 'Sorry' is too bright for my taste, while Paolo Nutini's 'New Shoes' is a bit on the muffled side, so I want to be able to hear that difference very clearly on any monitoring system. Similarly, I want Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn' to seem over-sibilant, otherwise I'm not getting the kind of information I need to mix with.</p>

<h2>Some Perspective...</h2>

<p>There are a couple more points I'd still like to make, though. Firstly, reading back though all of the above makes it seem like my listening and evaluation process is rather more systematic and methodical than it really is. In practice I do a lot of skipping back and forth between all the different tracks, with the aim of simply trying to make up my mind what I think about various aspects of the speakers' performance. And even after I've got to the stage of writing things down, I'll usually return to the tracks many times to double-check that I really <i>did</i> hear what my scribbled notes said I heard! Fundamentally, I try to be as sure as I can be that I agree with my own opinions. <img src="[[$sitePrefixCMT]]SitePix/EmoSmile.gif"></p>

<p>And, secondly, I'm usually reviewing speakers from the perspective of using them as a mixing tool, so I never like to commit to a final opinion before I've actually done some real mixing on them (complete with the all-important mix-referencing stage) and then related the mixdown results (and my impressions of them) back to my own monitoring setup. Without this stage I feel I'd end up discriminating against systems (such as the classic Yamaha NS10s) which are usable mix tools despite not sounding tremendously appealing subjectively.</p>

<p>Hopefully that all makes some sense, but feel free to ping me if you need any further clarifications!</p>

<h3 class="h3ResourceCategory"><a name="resources">RELATED RESOURCES</a></h3>

<ul>
<li><strong>Further Reading:</strong> I've written a few other articles on refencing and critical listening in general that you may also be interested in: <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/referencecd.htm">Creating Your Own Reference CD</a> and <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr11/articles/listen-and-learn.htm">Analysing Commercial Mixes</a>.<br><br></li>

<li><strong>Some Other Suggestions For Reference Material:</strong> Try the <a href="http://www.digido.com/media/honor-roll.html">Honor Roll of Dynamic Recordings</a>, from the Digital Domain web site of Bob Katz, and this list from <a href="http://www.johnvestman.com/commercial_cds.htm">Vestman Mastering</a>.<br><br></li>

<li><strong>Interviews With A Couple Of The Engineers I Mentioned:</strong> I mentioned Richard King's work on <i>The Goat Rodeo Sessions</i>, so here's the interview where I talked to him about those recordings: '<a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep15/articles/richard-king.htm">Richard King: How To Record Acoustic Ensembles</a>'. His forthcoming book's called <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Recording-Orchestra-and-Other-Classical-Music-Ensembles/King/p/book/9781138854543"><i>Recording Orchestra And Other Classical Music Ensembles</i></a> and it's coming out at the end of the year -- in the meantime, here's <a href="http://pro.harman.com/insights/enterprise/hospitality/performing-arts/room-mics-or-artificial-reverb-an-excerpt-from-richard-kings-upcoming-book-recording-orchestra-and-other-classical-music-ensembles/">an excerpt</a> I spotted that makes me even more keen to read the final release! Here's a great interview with Mike Shipley about recording and mixing that Alison Krauss record: '<a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/people/mike-shipley-recording-alison-krauss-paper-airplane">Mike Shipley: Recording Alison Krauss's <i>Paper Airplane</i></a>'. Husky Hoskulds recorded the Solomon Burke record, and I interviewed him in depth about that here: '<a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jul03/articles/huskyhoskulds.asp">Husky Hoskulds: Recording Solomon Burke</a>' -- love his views on using spill.<br><br></li>
</ul>