Lexicon 960L
A flagship digital reverb whose brain is a 400 MHz Celeron, a 3.5" floppy drive, and a CD-ROM.
Overview
The 960L is a multi-channel digital audio effects processor built around the LARC2 remote controller. Pull the covers off and the first thing a technician notices is how much of it is a computer. Lexicon's own printed circuit assemblies are an NLX backplane, an I/O backplane, an I/O clock card, analog in and analog out cards, a reverb card, an AES card, and the two LARC2 boards. Six OEM devices sit alongside them: an NLX PC processor card with a Celeron CPU, an NLX/ATX power supply, a 3.5" floppy drive, a CD-ROM, a MIDI card, and a hard disk drive. According to the service documentation, the system is those nine Lexicon assemblies plus the six OEM devices. It is described as a high-end digital audio effects system that can run as a multi-channel processor or be configured as a single-channel processor. That's serious DSP wrapped around commodity PC hardware.
The Celeron dates the machine precisely. The boot menu reports the processor clock speed, and the manual notes the displayed figure runs 1-3 MHz below the actual value. A reading of 398 MHz means a genuine 400 MHz Celeron. The required BIOS is Intel SU810 version 5, dated 11/22/99, and the boot menu itself carries a BIOS date of 11/22/99. The boot menu version is 1.00R, though the documentation warns that number can change without the document being updated. None of this is glamorous. It does mean the brain of this professional studio gear is a late-nineties office PC.
The reverb card is where the Lexicon DNA lives. The functional diagnostics list what's on it: a 56301 talking to dual-port RAM, a Z80 to dual-port RAM, Z80 to DRAM, Z80 to SRAM, and the Lexichip3's writeable control storage and audio data file, plus TMIX and the serial audio lines across all the octal audio data paths. The card carries four Lexichip3s, and the diagnostics refer to them as "Lexichip3" followed by a number. Four leftmost LEDs on the reverb card should be lit. If they aren't behaving, the documentation points at the 56301 and its associated circuitry as the likely culprit.
Control comes entirely through the LARC2, connected over a 50-foot, 9-pin cable. That's a generous tether, and it lets the controller sit at the mix position while the mainframe lives in the machine room. The LARC2 has sliders, a joystick, and a bank of buttons. The service checklist is tactile about it: verify the sliders move smoothly and don't bind, verify the joystick has smooth, fluid movement, and depress every button to confirm non-stick operation. The manual also advises checking the display for cracks or shattering. There's a PS/2 keyboard port too. Plug a keyboard in before powering up and individual diagnostic tests can be driven by name, run once, a set number of times, or forever until a key is pressed.
On the rear panel, Mix (January 2001, p.173) described the 960L as Lexicon's flagship full-featured multi-channel/stereo digital effects system, with 8 channels of analog I/O and 8 channels of AES/EBU digital I/O. There are also MIDI in, out, and thru jacks, word clock in, out, and thru, and the 9-pin port for the LARC2 cable. EQ (2000, p.98) reported that the 960L had been promoted as the next step after the 480L, and that Lexicon had spent much of the preceding 25 years producing state-of-the-art, world-class effects processing. The same piece flagged a real limitation: the reviewer judged the 960L's MIDI implementation woefully basic, able to respond only to MIDI program and bank changes, with the hope that future revisions would expand it. EQ (2000, p.36) had already described the unit as picking up where the esteemed 480L left off and assuming the role of the company's flagship, with surround-sound processing aimed at postproduction applications and a goal of envelopment without compromising clarity and intelligibility. Mix (April 2001, p.81) placed it in the lineage the company had built, tracing Lexicon's reverb reputation from the model 224 in 1979 through the 480L in 1986, and noting the industry's quick embrace of multi-channel sound as formats like DVD created new demands.
The AES path is where the system gets tested. The functional audio procedure feeds a balanced XLR from a digital function generator into the 960L's 1-2 AES input, applies a 1 kHz sinewave at -1 dBFS, sets a 0 dB reference, and sweeps 20 Hz to 20 kHz, verifying level within +/- 1 dBr across the range. Then it repeats for output 2, and for the 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8 input/output pairs. The manual calls the resulting dry algorithm "8 In 8 Out," available in normal operating mode.
Diagnostics come in three kinds: power-on, functional, and troubleshooting. Power-on runs every time the unit boots. It verifies basic reverb card functionality, checks which cards are present in the I/O cage, and communicates with the LARC2. Functional diagnostics verify the digital circuitry - the MIDI port, Serial 2 port, the reverb card internals, and the I/O cage cards - and the documentation notes diagnostic testing is performed prior to burn-in. Troubleshooting diagnostics exist so a technician, in-house or on the other side of the world, can debug down to the component level. There are ten built-in diagnostic scripts, and custom scripts can be written and run from the floppy drive. That means someone has to keep 3.5" disks around.
Entering diagnostics is a two-button ritual. Hold PROGRAM and MACHINE on the LARC2 together for two seconds immediately after powering on. Release when the display reads "Requesting Menu Mode from 960L . . .", then wait roughly a minute and thirty seconds for the boot menu. Option 5 is 960L Diagnostics. The boot menu also offers running the 960L, updating 960L software, updating the LARC2 boot ROM, and updating LARC2 software. The diagnostic screen reports the Chameleon configuration, number of cards, subvendor ID, 56301 IDR, DB type (Lexichip III), DB version, and then walks the I/O cage card by card - clock, AES, analog in, analog out - flagging anything it can't identify as unknown.
Power supplies are a known variable. The documentation states plainly that various manufacturers' supplies have been specified for the 960L, with slight mechanical differences between them. Some units have a voltage selection switch, and others auto-sense the AC input. Always inspect the rear panel for the proper AC voltage setup. Test the supply while it is fully connected in the mainframe to get accurate voltage readings.
When a 960L won't boot, the manual's troubleshooting order is unambiguous: check the power supplies first, then suspect the motherboard and swap in a known good one. That swap comes with a serious warning. The bottom of the motherboard must never contact the metal chassis. The board carries a lithium battery in a thru-hole holder, and if the holder's leads short against the chassis, the battery shorts and permanent damage follows. Seating the NLX motherboard into its connector takes considerable force, the contact pins are small, and misalignment or incomplete seating produces false failures. The manual's seating check is specific: the right notched edge of the motherboard should sit almost against the NLX connector on the backplane, with the threaded standoffs at the front of the chassis up against the slot cutout of the motherboard support bracket. If it still won't boot with good supplies and a correctly installed known-good board, the next suspects are the reverb card, then the CD-ROM, hard disk drive, and floppy drive.
It is a Lexicon reverb at heart, the company's flagship by EQ's reckoning, and a small-form-factor PC in practice, complete with BIOS revisions, boot menus, and a hard drive that will eventually stop spinning.
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