Universal Audio have added yet another classic studio name to their arsenal of UAD2 DSP-powered plug-ins: Lexicon. One of the best-known hardware reverb manufacturers, Lexicon’s first digital reverb was the 224, and it is this that UA have modelled for their UAD2 platform.UAD2 224 plug-in
First released in 1978, the 224 is one of the earliest commercially available digital reverbs, but it is still considered one of the finest. For the plug-in recreation, Universal Audio apparently took the latest version of the 224’s software (v4.4) and modelled all eight of its reverb programs, plus its one chorus program, including every adjustable parameter. But they didn’t stop at modelling the original’s algorithms: they also emulated its analogue stages (including the input transformers), and the 224’s dated A-D and D-A converters.
The plug-ins UI is based on Lexicon’s LARC, the fader-based remote control for the 224, and it features sliders for bass and mid reverb time, mid/high crossover frequency, HF decay time, depth and pre-delay. There are also program-select buttons, plus a row of buttons that, as far as we can tell, pertain to the accuracy of the emulation (no manual was available at the time of writing, however, so we can’t be sure). The switch labelled ‘Sys Noise’ might do something like switch off the recreation of the original’s noise floor, while ‘Mode Enh’ may switch between models of the different A-D and D-A converters found on different revisions of the 224. We’re still waiting for a copy of the manual, however, so these last two assumptions are exactly that! We’ll update this story as soon as we have more information.
