Yeah, very much agree. To me, the thing that separates out the best from the good is how much wet reverb signal can you add and have it still seem like 'part of the sound'. At some point it crosses over into being an effect bolted on to a sound, rather than it being integrated as one. The thing that amazed me about Lexicon is how much reverb you can add and it remain a cohesive sound.

A lot of the electronic sound sources of the 80's were pretty awful sounding (cough Fairlight cough DX7) but they could sound magical after some expensive outboard: AMS Delay and Lexicon reverb.

I pieced together the linage from various articles. Some of this you'll likely already know, but maybe not all:

The PCM bundle are ported algorithms from the PCM96. The primary algorithm designer was Michael Carnes for the PCM96 and most other Lex products of that era. He left Lexicon and formed Exponential Audio in 2012. Sold the company to Izotope in 2018. The Izotope "Equinox" plugin contains the two Exponential Audio algorithms and are generally highly regarded.

You've got the Dr David Griesinger era of Lexicon that encompasses the 224, 480L and 960L ('70's thru '90's). There's the Carnes blank slate Lexicon algorithms of the 2000's that are still biased towards the signature Lexicon sound but could take advantage of more powerful DSP chips. After that there's the Carnes post-Lexicon Exponential Audio algorithms where he had a free hand to do whatever he liked without being beholden to recreating the Lexicon sound.

You'll notice no new Lexicon algorithms since the PCM96, because they have no algorithm guru to push the state of the art further. But maybe they don't really need to improve on what they have.

It's been fashionable to sneer at the Lex verbs in recent years. But in double blind listening tests they still come among the top, so they're my go-to unless I want AMS RMX nonlin2 or something very specific.

 

Last edited: Nov 14, 2025 at 3:17 AM