Neighbors are why someday I"ll have a basement with 10'+ ceilings and acoustic treatments. ;)

That and it'll keep the WAF from falling to dismal levels when I buy/build big speakers. :D

I have also found that live music can sometimes really showcase a system. I used to play the live tracks off of John Mayer's Continuum album when people wanted to hear my setup (or, more commonly, when I wanted them to want to hear it...). Dreaming with a Broken Heart and I don't need no doctor live through my system have always sounded great to me.

Truth be told, even though I sold a lot of my gear when I downsized, I still have way more than I need. They aren't quite at the same level as the Interface Ds, but I'm really enjoying the little recapped and refoamed JBL 4301B Control Monitors in my modest dining room dedicated vinyl system:

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And I'm still running a pair of KEF 104/2 Reference Monitors in the master bedroom system and also have over 10 other pairs of speakers, including a pair or Rectilinear III Highboys and a pair of Vandersteen 2CEs that rotate through my three systems.

So, I only miss the Interface Ds when I think about them, but that's easily cured by putting on an album and enjoying what I still have.
 
Wish I still had them, my neighbors are glad I don't. They were a victim of downsizing from a 2700 sg. ft. home to a 1200 sq. ft. townhouse.

I live in a rowhouse in the inner city. In more upscale neighborhoods they are called townhouses. My neighbors can easily hear my rig whenever I advance the volume. Being mindful of neighbors and never trying to entertain them at unreasonable hours works for me. Some of the young adults on my block will sit on my porch steps and listen to what I'm playing. They know me well enough to complain when I play something they don't like. A while back one of them asked me what radio station I was listening to. Having most of my recordings on a music server PC playing in shuffle mode makes it so that you never know what's coming next.

With the exception of a modest 5.1 setup in my bedroom pretty much all of my gear is listed in my signature. I don't have multiples of anything except for three cassette decks.
 
Homebuilts. They're ported, tuned to something silly low like 35hz because I was 19 when I designed them. They run out of xmax at like 15w when run full range, I wanted to use them as near field monitors full range and only ever intended to run them with a sub for normal listening. They spent the first couple years of their life as enormous desk speakers.

I'll try to remember to download them from my photobucket account and post a pic. I should really do that anyway since that might be the only place I have the crossover schematics stored.

Not that I could replicate them very easily, I think the silkie design has changed since then and the mods that were made to the tweeters probably require every set to be measured (which we did with mine).
Interesting design nonetheless. Dayton drivers have their detractors, but I believe they're pretty good. I didn't know they sound so special for vocals, though.
 
Interesting design nonetheless. Dayton drivers have their detractors, but I believe they're pretty good. I didn't know they sound so special for vocals, though.

They're value leaders for sure. I think Seas and Scanspeak are at the top of the heap of the commonly available bare drivers.

That said, I think my next project will be an econowave derivative in custom translam cabinets. I'm itching to play with some waveguides.
 
Replaced the B&W DM302s with JBL L20Ts while keeping the Rotel. Herbie Mann's Watermelon Man sounds really nice.
 
"Fade to Black" by Dire Straits get a lot of rotation on my system. Some combo of the vocals and guitars, along with Knophler's amazing production skill...
The sheer dynamics of "All Night Long" from Mr. Ritchie bring a smile to my face. I just picked up a 12" promo single for that actually.
 
I have the best-sounding system I've ever owned so pretty much everything sounds better. The best-sounding specimens are all the usual suspects of the very-well-recorded variety, though there are some differences of opinion among us with what qualifies for that status. Therefore I see it more a question of recording quality than any kind of special match between song and my system. Understand, I'm not saying that my system is better than anyone else's who've posted, just better than what I have previously owned (as opposed to heard). Here are some of the recordings I use to check out SQ, in no particular order and not at all exhaustive:

Glenn Miller Band - In the Digital Mood (esp. Chatanooga Choo-Choo)
UB40 - Red, Red Wine
Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat (title track, or whole thing)
Bach's Harpsichord Co. in D Minor (PC file, not tagged with performance id info)
Debussy - La Mer; Cleveland, Boulez
Miles - Kind of Blue
Flower Kings - Banks of Eden
Rickie Lee Jones - Rickie Lee Jones
Frank Sinatra - Reprise: The Very Good Years
Barry Manilow with Sarah Vaughn - Blue (from 2AM Paradise Café)
Return To Forever - The Mothership Returns
Dire Sraits - Telegraph Road
Getz/Gilberto - Girl from Ipanema
Harry James - King James Version (though my copy's gone missing - Sheffield Lab cd)
Rippingtons - Life in the Tropics
Bob James - Heads
Modern Jazz Quartet - The Last Concert
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic
Lots of Telarc, DG, GRP, ECM, Sheffield Lab, Blue Note and other 'audiophile' and/or popular recordings.
 
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Anything from the Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell album sounds damn good on my system. It's an absolute bass fest.
 
I have the best-sounding system I've ever owned so pretty much everything sounds better. The best-sounding specimens are all the usual suspects of the very-well-recorded variety, though there are some differences of opinion among us with what qualifies for that status. Therefore I see it more a question of recording quality than any kind of special match between song and my system. Understand, I'm not saying that my system is better than anyone else's who've posted, just better than what I have previously owned (as opposed to heard). Here are some of the recordings I use to check out SQ, in no particular order and not at all exhaustive:

Glenn Miller Band - In the Digital Mood (esp. Chatanooga Choo-Choo)
UB40 - Red, Red Wine
Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat (title track, or whole thing)
Bach's Harpsichord Co. in D Minor (PC file, not tagged with performance id info)
Debussy - La Mer; Cleveland, Boulez
Miles - Kind of Blue
Flower Kings - Banks of Eden
Rickie Lee Jones - Rickie Lee Jones
Frank Sinatra - Reprise: The Very Good Years
Barry Manilow with Sarah Vaughn - Blue (from 2AM Paradise Café)
Return To Forever - The Mothership Returns
Dire Sraits - Telegraph Road
Getz/Gilberto - Girl from Ipanema
Harry James - King James Version (though my copy's gone missing - Sheffield Lab cd)
Rippingtons - Life in the Tropics
Bob James - Heads
Modern Jazz Quartet - The Last Concert
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic
Lots of Telarc, DG, GRP, ECM, Sheffield Lab, Blue Note and other 'audiophile' and/or popular recordings.
Always nice to see Bob James and the Rippingtons mentioned here. I use them both to set up my system.
 
For bass, I like Bridge of Sighs/In This Place, from Robin Trower. Even with no tone controls, I'm not left thinking that I might need a sub....
 
Great thread topic! Since I started building things audio I tend to use a few discs known to me and have their own intrinsic recording traits. Those tracks would be: Eagles in Concert, Parliament "Pin the tail on the Funky", Dire Straits "Brothers in arms". Nora Jones , Miles Davis, Hawaiian Masters, Compilation "History of Indian Music" with Ravi Shankar.

FWIW,a few years ago I moved away from single driver horns and smaller reflex boxes to big Altec enclosures and compression drivers on horns. I actively triamp the main system and use a variety of amps. The sound is big, accurate, and dynamic.
 
Recently I have been playing KISS - Dressed To Kill [A. Zentz mastered vinyl] on one of systems because it just sounds so damn good. I have a modded Technics SL1200MKII with AT150Mlx cart, Sansui 2000X and either my Grado SR325is headphones or these recently acquired SONY SS CPX 22 speakers which sound WAY better than they should. Loved this record since childhood, a short [29 minutes] but solid effort that really epitomizes what I like most about good SQ.
 
The last half part of the album Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) form Slipknot contains pretty good sounds that shines with a slightly warm and transparent RCA 12AX7 Long black plates on my Raphaelite DP84 amp and my modified Paradigm 7SE speakers.

But sounds dull like shit with precise and soft JJ ECC803S as preamp tubes.
 
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The last half part of the album Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) form Slipknot contains pretty good sounds that shines with a slightly warm and transparent RCA 12AX7 Long black plates on my Raphaelite DP84 amp and my modified Paradigm 7SE speakers.

But sounds dull like shit with precise and soft JJ ECC803S as preamp tubes.
Wait... Slipknot is that one nu metal band, isn't it? So they actually care about mastering quality?

Anyway, my Sansui AU-7900 has been repaired, and I tried it with JBL L20Ts. Now every single song sounds really nice. To be honest I've never heard Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy, but to my ears, nothing beat the AU-7900 airiness combined with JBL titanium dome tweeters. Decades ago my dad used the AU-7900 to drive his less-airy JBL 4311s, and while the system sounded really alive, nothing beats the musicality and especially the airiness of AU-7900/JBL titanium dome tweeter combo.

But of course, the combo's weakness is still movies and/or computer games; the AU-7900/JBL titanium combo just doesn't have enough slam and dynamics to make the explosions sound alive.
 
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