Universal Audio Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb

Typical U-Audio on-line purchase, download of authorization file, and un-lock. A walk in the park...

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

For fans of classic 80s reverb this plug-in is it. And of course it doesn't stop there see my overall opinion. This reverb is the "bee's knees".

OVERALL OPINION

From the moment it was unleashed on the audio industry in 1978, the original Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb — with its tactile, slider-based controller and fa- mously lush reverb tail — almost single-handedly defined the sound of an en- tire era. It served as a major player in the sound of highly influential classics such as Talking Heads' Remain In Light, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's The Message, Vangelis' incredible Blade Runner soundtrack, U2's Un- forgettable Fire, and Peter Gabriel's So. With such a refined legacy, it's no surprise that the Lexicon 224 remains one of the most popular digital reverb units of all time.
The result of using the very same algorithms and control processor code from the original hardware, the UAD-2 Lexicon 224 precisely captures all eight re- verb programs and the chorus program — based on the Lexicon 224's final and hard-to-find firmware version 4.4. In UA's exhaustive modeling tradition, the Lexicon 224 plug-in also incorporates the original unit's input transformers and early AD/DA 12-bit gain stepping converters — nailing the entire analog and digital circuit paths right down to the last detail.


Every tunable parameter from the original is present in the Lexicon 224 plug-in, and exposed as dedicated controls — inviting easy experimentation and sonic exploration. All seven algorithms/nine programs are available un- der the Program selection. Lexicon’s distinctive Bass/Mid “split decay” adjust- ments and Crossover control set the highly tunable reverb image, along with the Treble Decay for rolling off high frequencies. Depth sets the apparent dis- tance between source and reverb, while Predelay produces a short delay be- tween the sound source and the onset of reverberation. Diffusion affects how quickly the echo density in the reverb builds up over time.
Clicking the “OPEN” text to the right of the display panel exposes several hid- den controls, including Input/Output gain and Pitch Shift, and even a select- able “Bug Fix” mode which enables/disables historical bugs fixes from the Hall B and Chorus programs.