The "Spoiler" with "Pace Car"


Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio is well known in these pages and I thought it would be worth while to write up a short report here on my listening experience with his latest offering.
The digital side of my rig consists of a Zanden chain as well as DCS gear. All cables are by Stealth, (except for the Spoiler, where I found Steve's cable to be quieter) and on the speaker side I enjoy my good old Quad ESL 63, sitting on top of the Gradient Sub63, whereas on the top of the Quads sits an A Capella ION TW1S tweater serving the high end of the spectrum. For the real low end there is a pair of selfpowered subs. The Quads are driven by Zanden 6500s, the Gradients by Atma M60MkIIIs and the Plasmas by a highly modded Jolida JD 1000 RC. I run the Quads without a X-over, but use the Gradient balanced offering between the subs and the A-capellas. To my ears and those of my friends, the system is coherent,has all the advantages an ELS will bring, plus a carefully blended in high and bottom end. In my 4x5m listening room, more than satisfying LPLs are possible without the Quads shut down protection kicking in.
I used the Spoiler DAC with a Toshiba laptop, which Steve had syncronised with the clock in the "Pace-Car" and listened to all kinds of music from the computer through foobar, windows media player as well as iTunes, prefering foobar at the end. Comparisons were made in the way, that the CDs we wanted to listen to were transferred to foobar, listend to through the Zanden chain, the DCS Verdi Encore, Verona and Elgar combination and then trough the laptop connected to the "Spoiler" with a 5m usb cable run.
Whereas to our amazement the Zanden generally sounded more real than the DCS, which we realy only found pleasing with SACD, which of course the Zanden cannot do, Steve Nugent's "Spoiler" easily held its own with the Zanden. There was the same uncanny black silence, the same amazing presence of instuments and voices....and on certain discs it bettered the Zanden with female voices and violins, which simply sounded more real and more natural. Also, this was another finding which amazed us, in big orchestral music, the Spoiler often came out on top as far as width and depth of the soundstage were concerned. Instruments and voices were rock steady, tghe silence between notes uncanny.
This is just a prelimilary report, but it seems that in imediacy and naturalness in the rendition of instruments and voices the "Spoiler" with Pace Car is hard to beat and if you consider the prices of the gear we compared it with, that certainbly makes you think.
detlof
Kubla, nice to hear from you after all those years of my absence! Happy New Year to you too!
Kubla, I don't have any experience with your gear, but hear that it is very good. From what Steve tells me however, the Spoiler cum Space Car seems to be his best presentation so far and amazing it is indeed!
Greetings from Switzerland,
Detlof
Detlof - It's been a couple of weeks since your initial post regarding the Spoiler with Pace Car. Any additional thoughts or comments? I will admit I found your write-up quite intriguing.
Well in the last weeks or so I've been trying hard to find faults or shortcomings in the sound of the "Spoiler" when comparing it to the "Zanden" or the "Verdi Encore" and as a caveat I feel compelled to mention something which of course we all know, that we all have our preferences and that all hearing is subjective. But I'll try all the same:
You cannot beat the Spoiler - Pace Car - Toshiba laptop combination in the rendering of small groups, female singers or solo violin. Dizzy Gillespies hilarious "Swing Low Sweet Cadillac" comes to mind here, Stacey Kent's "Breakfast on the Morning Tram" CD or Hilary Hahn's rendering of Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas. the presence and immediacy of the rendering is uncanny with the "Spoiler", with the "Zanden" mind you, coming a very close second. The "dcs" in DSD-mode did not convince me. Hahn's violin and the voice of Stacey Kent lost a tad of its itimacy and naturalness here. Bloated would be too hard a word here, but the sound went into that direction.
With big orchestral classical music now, the "Spoiler" presented a sounstage that was wonderfully deep and wide, again with the Zanden a close second. What the Zanden however seemed to do better here, was the rendering of the richness and warmth say of massed strings, also brass instruments were more natural, the reeds sounded more "right" and it was hard here to hear a difference beween the Jap and the Brit. (dcs) Here I found the "Spoiler" just a tad too dry for my liking. These are minor quibbles, mind you. On the other hand however just let me share another really amazing experience with you, which I made with the "Spoiler": There is this musically outstanding rendering of all the Beethoven symphonies with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonics on a set of Deutsche Grammophone CDs, the sound of which is just plain terrible. This is something which can drive an audiophile and musiclover to despair: Great music on badly recorded CDs. The other day I found the same music on DVD. I did not know, that all the sessions had been filmed. So I put Beethovens 9th into the CD/DVD player of the Toshiba laptop and listened to the music through the "Spoiler". What a difference. All the congestion of the music in the DG recording was gone, the soundstage huge, the rendering so clear and differentiated, that you almost could hear every single voice within the chorus, not to speak of the indiviual singers who came through wonderfully clear. I did not bother looking at the film, in fact I found it distracting, I was so enthralled by the music. No dryness here I found, so I wonder if the Spoiler is really at fault here and if it is rather to be pinpointed to the CDs I used. So more critical listening is called for, which I don't feel like doing right now. I'd rather just relax and enjoy for the moment.

Cheers and thanks for your interest,
Detlof
Can you tell us what is the difference between the Spoiler and a more conventional DAC? And what does the Pace Car do? Is it a sort of reclocking device or memory buffer like the old Genesis Digital Lens?

Chris