[BILL HOLLAND PROCESSING A TRACK USING THE LEXICON MX400XL]

BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. My name is Bill Holland, and you’re listening to the Lexicon MX400Xl, an extremely powerful dual stereo surround and reverb effects processor. You’ll notice on the front here I have input A stereo going in, left and right, from my computer. Hear it real quick here.

[BILL HOLLAND PROCESSING A TRACK USING THE LEXICON MX400XL]

I don’t have anything on input B right now because for the purposes of our demo and the fact that this is going to be up on the Internet, you’re doing anything like a surround mix is not going to really impact the video, so I’m keeping it simple by keeping it left and right. Now, here you’ll see that I have effects on A and two on B so you can change that up however I want and actually change it up via preset. So, I can either in this case have mono delay and small hall and change those up, or I can change up the preset, in this case Echoverb. Say I want Guitar World, tape chorus which I had up before on channel A and my only input right now stays the same. If I exit here, you’ll see that I can go with my program knob here and select different patches that are available. We have a lot of different patches available to us ranging from vocal patches to spring verbs to modulated delays to just plain old bizarre tape delay patches like Ham ‘N Eggs.

Now on the back side, you will see that there are four XLR in and outs, SPDIF and a footswitch, and also USB which allows you to connect to the MX editor, which is a piece of software available from Lexicon for the MX400XL.

Let’s go into the display here and take a look at some of the effects. To make this easier here, I’m going to solo my drums.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Okay. Now, let’s go down the line really quickly.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

You have a basic vocal chorus. The chorus is in pretty powerful. You can see speed, depth, and number of voices that aren’t bypassed. Lower the number of voices. We also have plate and hall...,

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

...an example of one of the bigger sounding reverbs available in this unit. There’s also Alive ‘N Kicking which is kind of as live sound sound...,

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

...Tap Chamber which is a pong delay combined with a chamber hall effect.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Spring Studio: This is like the sound of a spring reverb in a natural studio.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Precision delay. Again, you can adjust delay time and feedback.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

You have a rotary speaker in here as well.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

This will probably actually sound better on the bass, so I will switch over to my bass.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

There’s also a Rhodes Panner, doing a tremolo pan type effect...,

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

...a flanger which again can be adjusted for depth and speed...,

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

...a phaser with delay on it.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Another really cool thing about the MX400 is that it has built-in dbx compressor and de-esser. So, if you have a drum, there are presets for drums, in this case the Smooth Drum Plate, which combines a dbx compressor and drum plate. Check this out.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Let’s go to the compressor. Threshold -3 that’s about right, Ratio is 4:1 that’s good, and gain is about where we want it. Now, if we want to get rid of the plate, let’s page over real quick and I can bypass it so you just have the dbx compressor so you can actually hear what’s that doing when I bring down the threshold.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

You can hear it kind of over-compressing there.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Or if bring up the ratio...

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

...and make it a brickwall limiter. Let’s put it back to -3, I think that’s really where we want it, and 4:1 is usually a pretty good place to have your drums.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A DRUM TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

One of the other really cool things about the Lexicon MX400 XL is the pitch shifter. Check this out.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Here I have Dualing Guitars which is a double pitch shifter patch. I can shift up or down.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

In this case, bringing it up.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

I can go to the other pitch shift patch and adjust its parameters.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

One last thing that is included in the MX400XL is the presence of vibrato. I’m going to solo my bass so you can hear this again. Let me go to 90 here and press the program load button.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

You can hear it as I increase vibrato speed and depth.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A BASS SYNTH TRACK THROUGH THE LEXICON MX400XL]

Thank you for watching Gearwire.Com. That was the Lexicon MX400XL, and my name is Bill Holland.