Hullo, just started working in a shop selling stereos, just wondering what you'd suggest to make speakers sound good :p I've picked Radio Ga Ga by Queen track 1, making some demo CDs so i don't have to keep looking for one out of the draw.

I would go with the old tommy vance radio one rock show open track and intro

Theme 1 - Van Der Generator from an An Introduction (cd) great in stereo

or real rock one

Deep Purple's - Child in Time

and to throw in a spanner in the works

Canon of the Three Stars - Isao Tomita from the cd Dawn Chorus

and the REAL wild card track

Within Temptation's - Somewhere Black Symphony [Live] [Disc 1] that one is a double dvd / double cd

?

Surely a proper hi-fi shop would:
a) already have demo cd's
b) Insist that the customer brings along some cd's they know well to listen to.

I wouldn't buy speakers without using my own source material (pref on SACD)

Personally I would reccomend your customers listen to what they listen to.

But if you want to have an arsenal to hand, (and yes I've shamelessly stole most of this list from the Talk Audio SQ forum )

Michael Jackson "Thriller"
The Eagles "Live"
Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon"
Norah Jones "Come Away With Me"
Paul Simon "Graceland"
Nirvana "Nevermind, Unplugged"
Bjork "Debut"
BT "ECSM"
Isaac Hayes "Hot Buttered Soul"
David Axelrod "50 Years of"
Bill Withers "Grandma's Hands"
Spiritualised "Ladies & Gentlemen"
Enigma "MCMXC a.D."
Diana Krall, Tracy Chapman, etc (anything)


Oh and see if you can get hold of any reference discs from the likes of EMMA, IASCA, Chesky, Telarc, et al.

EDIT Woah woah woah - what the hell is AR5ENAL blocked for? If we're going to blame TXT and L33T for the demise of the English language, can we please add censorship to the list of influences crippling one's lexicon.

"What would you suggest to make speakers sound good"...I had a chuckle with that. If a speaker is rubbish, it'll sound rubbish no matter what music you play through it.

My first though was about the legality of this - playing music in a shop where it can be heard by anyone passing the shop is classed as a public performance, and as such making such a CD could be illegal as you're not paying royalties on the music (piped music in shops has to be paid for).

I wouldn't bother - as pointed out earlier, let the customer decide what sort of music they listen to.

It's the wildcard at the end of ar5e that blocks it. I'll have to redo the filter

Here are some of the things I tend to use when looking at a new bit of kit:

Charlie - The Prodigy (Lots of very low end, cheap crap really struggles with it)
Happiness - The Blue Nile (The vocals in the chorus are quite delicate and pretty complicated)
Fascinating Rhythm - Dave Gruisin
Sweet Child in Time - Deep Purple (not to be confused with Sweet Child of Mine. Much more subtle than most of Deep Purple's stuff. Expressly the Made in Japan version)
Layla (uplugged version) - Eric Claption
Solid Air - John Martyn (A personal choice here, just because I really, really like the album)
Everything Changes - Iona (A most peculiar blend of punchy low end with fairly delicate celtic melody / vocals on top. Getting the balance right seems to be quite a challenge)
Prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1 - Single cello all the way through, gives a great sense of the 'tone' of the system
Sabre Dance - Khachaturian (Full on orchestra going about as mental as they can)
Downside-Up - Peter Gabriel

They are all in their for the quality of the music as well, rather than the recording / production quality. Reason being is that my hifi is for listening to music, rather than listening to quality levels. In turn, I don't tend to go for particularly analytical sounds, but prefer the warmth of things like Naim / ProAc

No rush dude.

Ummm, yeah i'll be playing the songs exclusively on cheap crap, didn't say they were good hi fis! So yeah they will be impulse buys of second hand stereos so I want easy to play songs that 'sound' like they have a lot of easy bass and don't have too many trebley bits! Hence, Queen is always good; John Deacon solos

Thanks for the suggestions everybody!

So for all your moralistic posturing you are prepared to employ smoke and mirrors to get people to part with their cash for tat?

Shame shame, know your name.

Overreacting much?

No not at all - but I do wonder if you'd have got as many enthusiastic responses if you'd stated your intent to be a [LIFTED] salesman in your original post.

As it goes, you're probably best discounting all the music that has been mentioned here so far and look to play highly compressed Radio 1-esque material if you're going for the "flash crash gash trash cash" effect.

If i was selling premium hi fi equipment I'd still be a salesman, everyone I'm selling to will be buying a second hand cheap stereo, when I say crap, I'm talking about a £150 Technics stereo, in good condition and good working order, now that's the sort of audio equipment that the vast majority of people listen to the vast majority of their songs on, and here's something that may surprise you, they enjoy listening to it. Now I can choose to make the stereo sound good or I can choose to make it sound bad and let them go to another store, where they will go and buy a second hand £150 Technics stereo. it's not as if I'm trying to fob it off as anything that it is not, I'm just trying to make it as attractive as it can be, I'm not conning people, I'm doing my job. If you want to know I got the manager to knock £150 off the price of our laptops today and I discounted one customer £18 off their phone, so I'm not ripping people off, to say I am is to be elitist and unrealistic, we're selling the stereos at a very fair price, blame Panasonic for making products to meet the demand at that price level if you really must.

So as you can probably tell, i don't like what you're implying.

I'm not sure what I have implied, but whatever it is I will gladly apologise for it.

As far as I can tell you are still trying to colour the customer's perception by employing a method to oversell a product. It is no different to an estate agent showing potential home buyers around a house when the neighbours from hell are on holiday.

I have been a salesman, in pretty much all of retail's shapes and sizes, and never once to my recollection did I ever offer anything but absolute honesty to my customers - and if that meant losing a sale, accidentally or deliberatley, then so be it - I didn't care - because I treated the customer as I would like to have been treated.

Perhaps I just don't understand the demographic you're catering for - but in my experience people aren't fond of being hoodwinked.

I agree, honest is always the best policy. If a customer is going to be better off with a product or service then I will always tell them so, even if we don't sell it. I call this good customer service, and personally I find customers respect you more for it and are more likely to come back again.