Lexicon Lexicon Studio

This is fairly straight ahead.


VERY unfortunately, and one of the reasons IMHO this was a marketing failure at the $3,000 price, was that Lexicon sold this as if "the things they were planning", were already a reality. For example, the salesmen said that you can link up more than one Core 32 in one computer by using the TBUS feature. You can't. You can only have ONE Lexicon Studio in ONE computer at a time.

The salesmen say it handles 32-tracks of DSP, well, that's misleading. The Lex Studio can handle "32 CHANNLES of AUDIO STREAMING" -- TRACKS are a function of your audio program (i.e. VST). However, in mastering, the TWO PC-91 hardware reverbs onboard, allow for no CPU drain that a plugin reverb would.

I've got a dual-boot setup, meaning Win-NT on my C: drive and Win-98 on my D: drive (physically different) ---- well, the lex drivers, ASSUME EVERYONE's installing on the C: drive, and therefore you've got to edit your registry (call tech support and they wrote a patch for me to handle this, which they deserve points for) -- but if you're not installing to C: your studio, out of the box won't work. Call tech.

If you're using this with any other modern digital gear, you're in luck because of the ADAT interface already there, the SPDIF, Word Clock and MTC. I haven't had the need to sync yet, but I will for film & video soon. (but here again, the salesmen said that this will WRITE SMPTE and WRITE WORD CLOCK, but it won't, it just READS it, but in a totally pro, high end way. Almost NOTHING on the market besides pro tools, will work with timecode internally the way this will.

Consistent with Lexicon's reputation. The reverbs sound like "reality" ... they sound like "the room" not like reverbs. Zero noise. It's really "a memorex test" ---- you can't tell the difference between what you just played and the Lexicon Studio's playback. It sounds every bit as good as any CD played into the same monitor system, well, actually better, because it's punchier because a CD is 16-bit and the Lex is 24-bit etc.

Perfect so far, but I've only had it a few months. However, I'm betting that LEXICON, will remain in business (unlike Matchless or ADA) so I'm not worried

Lexicon was pretty good and promised to still support this despite it's being discontinued. Now, the tricky thing, that almost no one knows, is that it's the 12T INTERFACE that's being discontinued, NOT the CORE 32 (the PCI card in the computer).

The thing that REALLY REALLY REALLY SUCKZ is that LEXICON (the ALLEGED high end people), don't have, and WON'T ever have NT drivers for this. Can you believe it? Any twit that knows anything about Windows, knows how Windows 95 & 98 CRASH like idiots in the dark. If you record that "perfect take" and the "tape was rolling" and WIN-98 crashes, as it loves to do, your perfect magic, ???? .... "it never happened" .... SO, the smart answer is to use NT, which almost ALL of the programs use, now also VST does, SO, Lex. COULD now write NT drivers for this, but THEY REFUSE TO. THIS IS BIG TIME BAD, because, I really don't think that it'd be all THAT impossible for them to just write the damn drivers for NT Workstation 4.0. They DID say they were planning on writing drivers for this for Windows 2000 which will be CLOSE to NT, so MAYBE the same driver would work, or THEN it'd be not too much trouble to go a bit further and write for NT. For THIS issue, I'd give Cust. Support a negative -40 on a scale of 1 to 10. Otherwise, they were very nice and helpful and emailed back promptly and gave thorough answers.

Now this double suckz because the drivers are for the CORE 32, which they're NOT discontinuing. The Lexicon Studio, (so I was told by Lex. tech. support) will be repackaged with the 10T rather than the 12T.

(They don't know what the new price will be, but it won't be the "dupming stock" level price I paid for mine.)

IF ANYONE KNOWS HOW TO WRITE WIN-NT DRIVERS AND IS WILLING TO FOR THIS, OR KNOWS WHERE SOMEONE ALREADY HAS MADE THIS WORK WITH NT, PLEASE EMAIL ME.

For the going $599 price that Guitar Center HAD and now Musician's Friend HAS (at this time) .... you can't get a better deal.

I have reverbs I use that I got in 1988 that still sound incredible. So, I figure, if you can't make top level recordings with this, it wouldn't be the hardware's fault. Where you going to get LEXICON level reverbs and AD-DA 24-bit converters at that price?? I think it beats the Yamaha DSP Factory.