Lexicon 960L
The usual directory sources say little about the Lexicon 960L. The surviving service and review material still tells a fairly clear story. This was Lexicon's flagship multichannel digital effects system, the successor to the 480L. It shipped with a separate control surface, the LARC2, instead of front-panel knobs. EQ Magazine (February 2000, p.36) described it plainly as picking up where the 480L left off and taking over as the company's flagship, aimed at surround and postproduction work.
The 960L mainframe is an 8-channel machine. Analog I/O is eight female XLR inputs and eight male XLR outputs, all balanced, with 24-bit conversion and a 0 dBFS level of +24 dBu. Digital I/O is four male and four female XLRs running AES/EBU at 24-bit word size. Internal and external sample rates are 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 kHz. Internal accuracy is within ±10 ppm, and the external lock range is ±1%. The analog path measures >110 dB dynamic range with THD below 0.002%. The reverb card carries four Lexichip3 processors, and the diagnostics call the chip "Lexichip III" by name.
The LARC2 is the human interface. It has a 640x240 passive-matrix LCD with 256 colors and a fluorescent backlight, an 8-channel LED meter bridge, eight motorized 60mm touch-sensitive faders, a two-axis joystick, 29 dedicated function keys (12 backlit), and eight soft buttons. It connects to the mainframe over a 9-pin D-sub. The cable can run up to 100 feet on 960L power, or up to 1000 feet with its own 12 VDC supply. It weighs about 4 lbs.
Reception was respectful but not uncritical. EQ Magazine (July 2000, p.98) called the 960L's MIDI implementation "woefully basic," since it could only respond to program and bank changes. Mix Magazine (February 2001, p.141) placed it in the lineage from the 224 (1979) through the 480L (1986) and called Lexicon the industry leader in digital reverb. By early 2003 the line had grown. Mix Magazine (January 2003, p.83) described three flavors - the full 960L with 8 channels of analog and 8 channels of AES/EBU, plus reduced versions. EQ Magazine (April 2003, p.88) reviewed the 960LS, a lower-priced version of what it called one of the most capable and expensive effects processors ever created.
Beyond that, the record gets thin. No production years, original prices, or sales figures are documented here. What survives is mostly service material - boot menus, diagnostic scripts, test equipment lists. That helps owners, but it says little about how many were sold or what they cost.
Known Specifications
- Type: Multichannel digital effects system (mainframe + LARC2 control surface)
- Analog I/O: 8 in / 8 out, balanced XLR, 24-bit, +24 dBu at 0 dBFS
- Digital I/O: 4 in / 4 out AES/EBU, 24-bit
- Sample rates: 44.1 / 48 / 88.2 / 96 kHz (internal and external)
- Reverb processing: Four Lexichip3 processors on the reverb card
- LARC2 display: 640x240 passive matrix LCD, 256 colors
- LARC2 faders: 8 × 60mm motorized, touch-sensitive
- LARC2 connection: 9-pin D-sub; up to 100 ft on mainframe power, 1000 ft with external supply
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