well you're the man, man. i just can't classify a betty-board dead tape as a referance disc though, no matter how many times you've listened to it. fwiw, Sinead O'Connor has a really good voice for referancing as well, but who will admit to owning those albums. anyone into car audio probably also has a Bass Mechanix cd for testing subs with, those might be handy for actually testing low end sound in audiophile gear (but i'd be afraid of causing damage).
what i've found out though is most of my absolute favorite recordings have a really natural sound as opposed to a very produced album (like Nirvana's Nevermind album). i guess the average listener probably preffers the overproduced type albums with that very radio single sound of blahness, but i really rather listen to the stuff with more character to it. for example, while Neil Young's Harvest is a fantastically produced and mastered album i much rather listen to Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere or Zuma because they have a really great garage band feel to them (thanks to the Crazy Horse garage band i'm assuming). i'm probably going to get called a crackhead for this as well, but i think that the original releases of albums tend to sound better than the remastered versions in most cases. it's especially true with older heavy metal albums, like the megadeth catalogue for example. dave mustaine personally remastered all of their back catalog and it sounds like garbage to my ears, the same with King Diamond. the remastering would be more effective if they master tapes were reprocessed with modern equiptment but mixed to sound identical to the original release, but with more detail via the higher quality transfer. i guess there are artists out there who still put out releases with a decent sound to them, but i've pretty much stopped buying new albums because i've been unsatisfied with the SQ on the discs. as pathetic as it is there's only 1 hip hop label left that actually puts out great sounding albums, everyone else has gone way of degradation via compression (as has been bitched about endlessly previously around here). the music industry sucks goat cock...