I love to use the second side of the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring to test my settings. Starts right off with a very quite scene in Rivendell to test your base SPL. Chapter forward to Balin’s tomb for some nice surround effects when bucket falls down the well and then some bass when the cave troll (not to be confused with a Klipsch troll) shows up. Followed shortly by more great surround effects when the orcs are crawling around the walls/pillars in the great hall. Then more surround effects as arrow are flying buy on the stairs and deep bass as the stair collapses. Then some in your face bass when the balrog shows up. Nice thing about this disk is all these scenes are easy to access w/o lots of fast forwarding and it has a little bit of everything…quite, ambient surround, directional surround, mid bass and bass.

My favorite opening scene is in Appleseed (2004). Cool techno music. Gunfire from all directions, people running up from behind and then onto the screen. Shell casings bouncing on the floor from gunfire. Glass and concrete shattering and hitting the walls all around you (one place where Audyssey will show off by making the breaking glass and concrete sound almost holographic).

As already mentioned Master and Commander. The opening has a quite scene with creaking and moaning of the ship. The opening battle lots of bass and great surround effects as wood splinters around your and people run above your head on deck. To bad the movie bites IMHO.

Opening of Star Wars IV. Cool base during the opening flyby of the star cruiser. Lots of panning effects across the front and some to the rear. Cool echoing scene inside the command ship. Nice bass as the ship crashes on the planet. Nice visuals also.

Opening of Kaena - The Prophecy. Very good front to back pans as the ship flies toward you and you go through it. Cool effects as you are submerged in water passing through the ship. Very cool side to side pans that also move forward as the ship flies way from you as you are looking back at it. Best scene I’ve found for testing directional cues moving from side to side and back to front. You will know if you have the surrounds calibrated and placed optimally if the effects on this scene move side to side and back to front seamlessly.

These are the ones I use to test any new settings especially since I’ve become very familiar with them.

3M80 2M22 6QS8 2M2 1EP500 Sony BDP-S590 Panny-7000 Onkyo-3007 Carada-134 Xbox Buttkicker AS-EQ1