MAX7219 with 8digit 7seg array
As always I recommend the old RTFM (read the f***ing manual) of the LedControl.h library.
In the FAQ its clearly stated:


  Why don't you use the hardware SPI-Bus of the Arduino?
  
  When I wrote the first version of the library I didn't knew much about
  the Arduino or AVR processors in general and I knew nothing about
  writing code for the hardware SPI-bus on an ATMega. But I knew how the
  SPI protocol works and how I could make this work using simple
  digitalWrite() commands. I turned out the library code is fast enough
  for common use cases, so there is no need for doing Hi-Speed
  communications.
  
  Other strong points in favour of the (admittedly trivial) code design
  are - Use any three free IO-Pins of your board for the hardware -
  Simple to debug. Much easier than managing 3 differnt SPI devices
  connected to the same hardware bus - Library is easily portable to
  other platforms, since it uses only two very basic functions from the
  Arduino language


So with this library you clearly have never used hardware SPI (although you could use the pins, but only via softwareSPI)