Spatial Computer completely transformed the sound in my room.

sameer kumar

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In my Emerald Physics centric set up, I always had a feeling that I was not enjoying the full potential of Ayon CD2 & Symphonic line RG7 because of my listening room conditions and the Behringer DCX2496.

To address these issues, I have replaced stock Behringer with Cullen circuits modified Behringer unit, placed few broadband acoustic panels and the sound quality became much cleaner.

Recently I happened to visit ARN Systems Bangalore and listened to a setup very similar to mine (Ayon CD1s, Symphonic lineRG10, Emerald Physics CS3) but driven by SPATIAL COMPUTER

The moment I listened to the Jack Jackson's 'In between the dreams' track I felt the clear difference between the set up @ ARN and mine. After few more tracks of other albums like Allan Taylor's Leaving at dawn, Steely Dan's Gaucho and Gundecha Brothers 'Temple Voices alap',I have instantly placed an order for SPATIAL from Clayton Shaw and finally found a solution to cut the role of the room to a large extent as well as do away with the Behringer.

Back to Hyderabad, bought Apple Mac mini and sought convenient schedule from Clayton Shaw (President-Spatial computer) to install SPATIAL remotely.
The whole process took 6 hours. Clayton Shaw remotely logged in to my Mac mini, installed Spatial and calibrated Emerald Physics CS3 specific to my room, my speaker placement and my listening spot. He performed room, speaker, and crossover correction among others. This has completely transformed my system taking it to almost a system at twice the price.

Now the set up sounds superb, much sharper, and cleaner and it is more defined.
When I played Pink Floyd - The Wall 'Hey you, compared to the earlier set up I felt much improved tone-fullness especially in the mid band. The bass was cleaner, drier, and faster. At the beginning passages of this particular number the bass guitar sound texture integrated very well with the rest which was not felt earlier.

In earlier set up the sound was steely on solo string instrument tracks. Now the strings sound is much more refined. I could hear complete Vishwa Mohan Bhatt,Ry Cooder 'Meeting by the river album at high volume without any ear fatigue. The guitar sound reproduction is brilliant.

While playing Jazz at Pawnshop 'Lime house Blues the feel of hall sound was very realistic. There was greater sparkle on xylophone sound. The difference was more on Keith Jarretts 'The Kln Concert - Part II-a", piano was very intense, sounded more dynamic.

In a nut shell this is simply a must have upgrade and has produced a far better result than upgrading to any speaker or amp.

6moons audio reviews: Spatial
 
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I concur as well. I had the good fortune of listening to Sameer's system before and after and there is definite, audible improvement after the spatial computer equalization process. I also spent time at ARN's listening rooms and the Emerald Physics set up driven by the Ayon and Symphonic line rg10 with the spatial computer sounded superb. I think this is no brainer for users of EP speakers and also recommend that any one who wants better sound and does not have the urge to DIY acoustic panels (as there are hardly any decent acoustic treatment products available here in India), should audition this product.
Cheers,
Sid
 
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Sameer, can you please tell us how the music is being fed to the Spatial?

The music is formatted and downloaded to the hard drive {external in my case} and library archived by itunes.
To play the music Spatial computer pulls the music files from the hard drive and analyses them as data, re-saves it on to the RAM,based on the user's room frequency measurements corrects it to reproduce the sound as it was intended to play then sends it out.
 
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@sameer: how would it play the music from an all analogue set up like mine?

I don't listen (actually maybe 10 hours out of 1000 would be spent on listening to CD or Flac). How does this work for a person like me?
 
@sameer: how would it play the music from an all analogue set up like mine?

I don't listen (actually maybe 10 hours out of 1000 would be spent on listening to CD or Flac). How does this work for a person like me?

I think it is possible from turntable to your computer hard drive via a USB or Firewire device.

phono -> phono pre-amp/LP-to-USB Converter -> file saved to hard drive as AIFF/WAV
 
Sounds like it's best suited to digital music. Can you feed it FLACs or does it have to be an Apple-friendly format?
 
I think it is possible from turntable to your computer hard drive via a USB or Firewire device.

phono -> phono pre-amp/LP-to-USB Converter -> file saved to hard drive as AIFF/WAV

i believe this might beat the whole purpose as to why one got into analogue in the first place ;)
 
On the FLAC support - it will be available very soon - by next month I believe.
On the Vinyl part - the solution wouldn't require the storage of this on APple - it can be done on the fly while the Vinyl is playing, however since the correction happens in digital, it still needs to go through an A->D->A (on the fly).

Normally, I would tend to agree with Malvai and Arj, but in this case, I would say that the improvement with Spatial is vast and much more than what any component upgrade would give, if one goes with a high end Mastering unit like the PrismSound Orpheus, the loss in A->D-> is only academic.

Sidvee,

I think you have the most experience of different systems and setup of anyone else out here (no offense to others), you should post more of your impression of Spatial - I know it was a short session....

cheers

cheers
 
Sidvee,

I think you have the most experience of different systems and setup of anyone else out here (no offense to others), you should post more of your impression of Spatial - I know it was a short session....

cheers

cheers

Ok - here it goes - As mentioned in my previous post I spent about 2-3 hours at ARN's showroom along with Sridhar on Saturday. Let me say this first - ARN has done a great job on their showroom and is a great place to audition equipment - I believe they have 3 rooms now. The equipment consisted of the EP CS3 powered by the SL RG10 Integrated amp. Sources were Sridhar's mac laptop into the Orpheus Dac. Do not remember the cabling off hand. I listened to 16/44 as well as hirez 24/96 tracks. First of all let me describe the speaker placement. The speakers were located in ARN's main room which is a large area and basically untreated other than carpet on the floor. To the left of the speakers is the glass display wall and to the right are equipment display shelves. Added to this hostile environment:lol: is the fact that the speakers are offset such that the right speaker is closer to the right wall than the left speaker is to the left glass wall. In addition there are hulking Usher be20's speakers slightly behind and to the inside of both the EP speakers which IMO will screw up the acoustics further by acting as huge resonance chambers. Finally the room itself is not a regular rectangular shape, but somewhat L-shaped with the listening area in the larger of the L and the reception desk in the smaller area.
The first track I heard was a Jack Johnson number (do not remember the track off hand), and it was literally jaw dropping. The soundstage was beautifully rendered, easily surpassing the speaker boundaries, literally making these somewhat large speakers disappear (I guess that all EP's do that), and imaging was laser precise, but most importantly it felt as if that the unfriendly acoustic environment was totally negated. To me it reminded me of a well treated, acoustically friendly room. On other tracks (Miles Davis, Steely Dan, Indian Classical etc.), the macro dynamics were startling and somewhat reminiscent of a live performance. Specifically on the Miles Davis, Kind of Blue album, the bite of the trumpet was easily discernable and entirely realistic. Moreover all audiophile jargon aside, the performance was musical with your attention drawn solely to the music. Overall it all added up to a superb listening session and spoke volumes about the advantages of the Spatial comp. Drawbacks - One that I noted was low bass was not as tangible as I would have liked, and here I felt that adding some bass busters to the corners would help, spatial computer or not, and as anybody who has tinkered with a graphic equalizer can relate, it is quite hard to equalize frequencies below 200 hz. Beyond that I did not have any other concerns. Sorry for the somewhat long winded post, hope it helps.
Cheers,
Sid
 
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My first post so forgive me for any faux pas that I might commit.

I have the Spatial Orpheus/Emerald Physics 2.7 setup so I thought I might add my 2 cents. Over the years I have spent a fortune on this wonderful hobby. This setup is not inexpensive but it is a far cry from the stratospheric prices of todays hi-end hifi.

The Spatial/Emerald Physics setup replaced a system that was in the $100,000 dollar price range, total cost of the S/ES tri-amped system about $25,000. The S/ES system out performs by a wide margin the system costing 4 times as much. I don't want to bash any of the fantastic vendors that manufactured the components in the higher priced system, the musical presentation was very good, the best I had experienced up to that point. It is just the S/ES rig is eye opening. Regular CD material sounds as good or better than the best analogue, Hi Res formats are amazing. Imaging, soundstage and musicality are all improved and not by a small margin. Any acoustic issues your room may have will almost if not completely disappear and lets face it that is where most of the issues reside. If you want to keep your analogue, I did, the Prism Orpheus elimnates the need for a phono pre providing the best RIAA pre that I have ever heard. Want to play SACD just feed the Orpheus the analog output.

I know I sound like I have a stake in this and I guess I do, I love music. I have no financial interest other than trying to keep my money in my pocket while being able to experience music in the most pleasurable way possible. Setup took a while to get just right but was well worth the effort. Biggest hastle selling all my other equipment.

My setup:
Spatial Prism Orpheus Package - $8,000
Emerald Physics 2.7 Speakers - $7,000
Nuforce 9 SE V3 4 mono blocks used - $4,500
Nottingham Space Deck and Arm/Phono Cartridge used - $3,200
Emotiva Amp for Bass - $700
Mogami Gold Cables TRS to XLR - $300
Kimber 8TC Speaker Cables two 5ft Pair - $650
Mac Mini - $700
Anti Cable Speaker for bass - $100

Carl
 
My first post so forgive me for any faux pas that I might commit.

I have the Spatial Orpheus/Emerald Physics 2.7 setup so I thought I might add my 2 cents. Over the years I have spent a fortune on this wonderful hobby. This setup is not inexpensive but it is a far cry from the stratospheric prices of todays hi-end hifi.

The Spatial/Emerald Physics setup replaced a system that was in the $100,000 dollar price range, total cost of the S/ES tri-amped system about $25,000. The S/ES system out performs by a wide margin the system costing 4 times as much. I don't want to bash any of the fantastic vendors that manufactured the components in the higher priced system, the musical presentation was very good, the best I had experienced up to that point. It is just the S/ES rig is
eye opening. Regular CD material sounds as good or better than the best
analogue, Hi Res formats are amazing. Imaging, soundstage and musicality
are all improved and not by a small margin. Any acoustic issues your room
may have will almost if not completely disappear and lets face it that is where
most of the issues reside. If you want to keep your analogue, I did, the Prism
Orpheus elimnates the need for a phono pre providing the best RIAA pre that
I have ever heard. Want to play SACD just feed the Orpheus the analog
output.

I know I sound like I have a stake in this and I guess I do, I love music. I have no financial interest other than trying to keep my money in my pocket while being able to experience music in the most pleasurable way possible. Setup took a while to get just right but was well worth the effort. Biggest hastle selling all my other equipment.
My setup:
Spatial Prism Orpheus Package - $8,000
Emerald Physics 2.7 Speakers - $7,000
Nuforce 9 SE V3 4 mono blocks used - $4,500
Nottingham Space Deck and Arm/Phono Cartridge used - $3,200
Emotiva Amp for Bass - $700
Mogami Gold Cables TRS to XLR - $300
Kimber 8TC Speaker Cables two 5ft Pair - $650
Mac Mini - $700
Anti Cable Speaker for bass - $100
Carl

Hi Carl,
I have been building my set up for quite some time to conclude with Emerald Physics 2.7.

But in recent times just arrested my EP2.7 upgrade plan and auditioned other speakers like Usher Mini Dancers,B&W 805s,Thiel 2.4s,ATC SCM 19 & 40s and Harbeth SHL5s in my listening room.

Before I request the dealer for a Home demo, I wish to know more about Emerald Physics CS 2.7 speakers from experienced audiophiles like you who are way ahead in this journey.

There are no reviews on EP 2.7 except few user experiences on audiocircle .

If it is possible , please furnish a very comprehensive information comparing your earlier set up with the current Spatial -Emerald Physics combo.

Cheers
Sameer
 
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