What I really love about Universal Audio’s Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb plug-in is the ability to turn the “system noise” on and off. Certainly, the bandwidth and dynamic range limitations were partially responsible for shaping the sound. But these units met the requirements of the recording technology of the time, and the 224-series became the standard digital reverb that you hear on so many classic recordings. The first thing you need to understand about the 224 or 224X is the fact that they employ 12-bit converters (albeit with gain-shifting for additional dynamic range) and 20 kHz or 32 kHz sampling-rates, respectively - not much when you consider today’s level of performance. In the following years, I was given many lessons by the wonderful Martin Rex, who was doing lots of mixing at that time.
#Lexicon reverb plugin review manual#
I did not have a user manual for the 224X (too young to read probably), so I started by just pushing each of the buttons and moving the sliders in multiple ways. The 224X brain sat in a rack, and before we had a machine room, it was mounted above the Sony PCM-701ES (a high-quality, 2-channel converter which would write to Betamax).īeing an illustrious tea-boy back then, I got lots of time at round 4 am (when cleaning the studios) to mess about and really get to know how certain gear made such a difference. It was the first time we had made that level of investment, and back then, Strongroom was a small, independent company, which meant that such a purchase was a big decision I remember it being a really big deal. I first became acquainted with the Lexicon 224X digital reverb in Studio One at the Strongroom around about 1989.