Best Home Theater Demo Movies and Music

[Palmz]

I'm going into a couple of stores for some 'extended' listening and wanted to bring in some good movie scenes and music to test various aspects of speaker performance. Can anyone make any recommendations?

So far I'm thinking:

Movies:
-Selected scenes from "Hero"
-A racing scene from "The Fast and the Furious"

Music:
-Any Michael Jackson
-Some Shania Twain
-Josh Groban: Canto Alla Vita
-Jurassic Park Theme

[recoveryone]

I have both those movies and trying to remember if the sound was what it impressive. Any who I go with the most recommended DVD for surround sound testing:

U571 in both DD and DTS

[Dusty Chalk]

Matrix -- opening chase sequence of Trinity. Or the fight scene from Reloaded. I like the first one because it's at the beginning of the disk.

Saving Private Ryan -- you know which scene.

Monsters Inc -- the 3-D chase sequence/finale.

T3 -- the truck accident.

From Dusk Til Dawn -- the 'I was in Nam' speech/Sex Machine hears voices sequence.

[Palmz]

Those are great suggestions. The Hero scene is the one where Jet Li slices the stacks of wood in half and catches the tea cup on his sword, there are a couple of others. The Mask of Zorro trailer is good too.

[icarus]

Hero was a a great movie for its cinema, and would be an excellent choice for picking out a TV, for the sound system, you can't go wrong with the pod racing scene in Star wars Episode 1, any modern war movie would also be a great option.

For music listening I would recomend some blues like BB King, to get some guitars in there...

[L.J.]

Just to name a few more.......

Master & Commander - Opening battle scene

Cars - Opening race scene

Incredibles - Pod chase/jungle scene

Matrix - Lobby/Roof scene

Jurassic Park - T-Rex scene (One of my favorites)

[phillyguy]

Movies:
The Incredibles
The Iron Giant

Music
Eagles- Hell Freezes Over

I love the Diner scene in The Iron Giant. The surround effects are great, clanking dishes to one side, other conversations in the surrounds, etc. Hotel California on the Eagles DVD has all the band spread out across the screen, and if you system is set up correctly, the sound will be spread out across your fronts and center channels. You can pick out each guitar. Awesome!

[PeruvianSkies]

AKIRA
MASTER AND COMMANDER
BLADE II OR III, or if you import the Japanese DTS edition
LAST OF THE MOHICANS
TERMINATOR 2, or the import Region 2 of TERMINATOR III
SEVEN
GLADIATOR
TOY STORY AND TOY STORY 2
X-MEN 2
STAR TREK NEMESIS Sp. Ed.
THE ROCK (Criterion Ed.)
BLACK HAWK DOWN (Superbit Ed.)
HOLLOW MAN (Superbit Ed.)
SPIDER-MAN 2 (Superbit Ed.)
LORD OF THE RINGS (EX. Editions)
U-571
DANCES WITH WOLVES (now out of print from Image Ent. or the import from Japan)
EVENT HORIZON (Sp. Ed.)
FINDING NEMO (Japanese DTS-ES import)
WINDTALKERS (Korean Full bit rate DTS Edition)
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (DTS-ES 1593 Kbps Korean Import)
APOCOLYPSE NOW REDUX (only in Dolby Digital, but still good)
KILL BILL VOL. 1 or 2

music-wise check out SACD's of....

David Bowie ZIGGY STARDUST
any of the Elton Johns
Depeche Mode's SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION (Import)

CD's...

Michael Jacksons Gold HIStory Double Set
Jewel's 0304, or SPIRIT HDCD
Madonna's Greatest Hits
STARSHIP TROOPERS Soundtrack HDCD
Neil Young's Greatest Hits HDCD
The Flaming Lips THE SOFT BULLETIN HDCD

[Woochifer]

Master and Commander is probably the best overall demo disc I've heard in terms of the dynamic range, the surround imaging, and the coherency of the vocals and other sound elements.

For pure bass extension, you should look for the out-of-print DTS version of The Haunting. This will really test your subwoofers.

I would also add a few non-action films to test different parameters on a multichannel setup

Insomnia - good soundtrack for how the vocals are recorded and mimic the type of space the characters are in; also very well mixed with ambient cues in the surrounds; good test to optimizing the speaker alignment

IMAX movies - films like Blue Planet and Stormchasers are very aggressively mixed with a lot of dynamic range and active use of the surrounds. Compared to typical movie soundtracks, the IMAX soundtracks do a lot more with the surround imaging. This is because of how the speaker alignments are typically done in IMAX theaters, which is more similar to a home theater 5.1 alignment than a regular movie theater that uses speaker arrays down the side and back walls.

[Palmz]

The Haunting is an excellent recommendation. My parents have it in DTS.

I've already utilized some of these scenes thanks so much for the advice. I'm demoing a few more set-up's this coming week.

[cjpremierfour]

The Haunting, T3, U571,Twister and The Incredibles are all great demo's. If you have an above average sub-woofer, you may also want to try War of the Worlds. For racing scenes, check out The Fast & Furious TokyoDrift, make sure you buy it used or on sale, it's a bad movie overall.
You would be hard pressed to find any music DVD or CD that has the bass output or surround information that these Blockbusters have. Depending on your taste, these music DVD are pretty dynamic:

Destiny's Child- Live in Atlanta
Peter Gabriel- Still Growing up-Live & Unwrapped
TOTO- 25th Anniversary-Live in Amsterdam
Janet Jackson- Live in Hawaii * 4.1 DD/ DTS
BeeGees- One Night Only

[Palmz]

Just wanted to say thanks for all of these recommendations. I've utilized MANY of them. I need to find a way to rip some of these scenes and compile them on a dual-layer DVD without losing the sound quality.