Hi Dr. J,
please bear with me….
if I may add my honest experience of… yikes! 40 some years of recording and mixing everything from the USA President Ronald Reagan to Sheryl Crow, I have always been a real lover of Lexicon reverbs, mainly the Lexicon 224 and 200. I still have my Lexicon 200 that I purchased at dealer cost ($4,100.00 USD) back in the eighties seen here, and YES it still works and sounds incredible.
Not necessarily off topic but,,, a little over a year ago, I replaced my Mackie DL1608 with a Mackie DL32R, and I love it. I use it mainly for jobs like wedding receptions and corporate events. I find I would always rather use my Qu24 and AR2412 with REAL FADERS and knobs as opposed to an iPad, but making life as easy as it can be as a priority, I use the Mackie iPad mixer much of the time unless of course it’s a concert, then I want the QU setup for sure.
When I had the DL1608 Mackie mixer, I could not believe how horrible the reverb sounded…. worse than a Yamaha SPX90 if you can believe that. I just refused to use it, but I had a TC Electronics M-ONE dual processor reverb unit from a school sound system rehab job and used it because it was lightweight, and one rack-space. It provided a way for me to still be free to roam with the iPad but have access at any moment to two different reverbs, medium room on Aux five and big room for ballads on Aux six. While it did eat up two aux sends and two inputs for stereo return, it was superior to the built in crap from the Mackie.
I continued to use the TC M-ONE with the DL32R, but like everyone who purchased a DL32R, I too was expecting that the effects were alloted more memory compared to the little DL1608, but nope… same crappy reverb. The delay works and sounds great, but the reverb … OH MY WORD!! get me outta here.
So, you are NOT alone, I agree with you, even the Qu mixer’s reverb, and in fact the GLD reverb is poo poo in comparison
to the TC, and of course the Lexicon will make you cry. So, it’s not like all this cool new technology let’s us do jobs and fit everything into a car, I still carry around an external reverb because to me… the reverb must sound beautiful if it is naked and all alone at the end of a phrase or song. I have no idea what goes on under the hood of these digital consoles as far as memory is concerned, but I do know that the reverb demands a lot of memory if the reverb tail is going to be smooth and silky.
The posting of this video below is not to promote Mackie over Allen & Heath, nothing of the sort, but only to show how I personally use the TC with my DL32R setup. I have done some live concerts and used the built in QU reverb and it is just OK to me, but it does get me by, but most concerts still get the Lexicon 200 and PCM80 then I am a very happy camper 🙂
