While finishing off the Boss VF-1 VST/AU builds, I have been working on an editor, controller for the Lexicon LXP-5. I thought I would build a new blog post to detail my work and provide updates.
I have worked out the majority of the sysex but there are a few things that are confusing at the moment. This includes the implementation of the channel which by the looks of it, is fused into the sysex string which in CTRLR, is represented by a yy. Should be easy enough to implement but I read elsewhere that the send comes after fixed sysex. I’ll have to double check.
The other areas of confusion include patch format for things like names. I’t really hard to make a build without the Lexicon Remote with a visual output but the reality is, I do not have enough coffess to buy one and after I have pulled this off, I won’t need one anyway. Therefore, it’ll be bumpy initiatally but when the data dumps come in, I’ll work it out.
That leads me on to the next question, dump. I could not find a dump button but a quick Google and I have found the sysex command.
I will continue to develop this project. I have a really fast workflow from the Boss units and I have been working on this alongside the Boss VF-1 project. As a result, I’m a lot further on that documented here. In fact, you are welcome to read through my earlier post here (link).
Next part of everything will be to start analysing the presets.
Okay, so the box is more complex than the surface will lead you to beleive. That’s a good thing. I can see there are some really nicely buried features in here and plenty to pull into the GUI.
Woooooah. The manual for the LXP5 is so detailed. They actually have all of the byte locations listed from the dump. This is brilliant. Took me months to work out every byte from the Boss units.
For the modulators, I want to try and make them meaningful but I do not have a Lexicon remote or a Lexicon LXP 15. Therefore, my approach will be to take an modulator such as ‘Delay 1 – Course’, get the top value of the midi parameter and then divide the value by that value. For example, 1040.4 / 127 and then multiplied by X (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) depening on the position of the dial location. That should give a really good spread. I will need to do some research on the top level of Hz for modulators such as filter cuts but thankfully, due to this being made in 1989, there are lots of ghosts on the internet which have been able to reveal values not represented in the manual. I’ll cross reference enough to make judgements but if anyone has an LXP-15 or RMC, please let me know the increments. thanks!
For High Filter Cut, I found the value of 15kHz from the RMC manual found here (link).
Delay course 2 is quite odd in that it only goes up to 126 according to the manual. I’ll have to keep and eye out for ranges when creating values. For Feedback 2, my friend (who knows a lot more about Lexicon’s than I), pointed out that he did not think it could go 100% and recommended using 127 as the division. If you think this is not right, please let me know in the comments section. Turns out this was right, it’s mentioned in the RMC manual at 99% (with some vlaues round so I’ll leave it). Decay time is a strange one. The seconds division of 16 dials turns did not match. Reading through
4-12, I can see that steps are provided. I’ll have to translate this to the dial.
I can see AI is really useful here. Copilot “create a logarithmic frequency progression from 0 to 1350. Divide this into 32 evenly spaced steps starting from 0 and ending in 1350.”
CoPilot “create logorithmic values starting at 320hz to 15000hz and no higher than 15000Hz. Divide this into 16 evenly spaced steps starting from 320Hz and ending on 15000Hz”.
CoPilot “create 32 values going from a bass multiplier of x0.3 to x2.5”
CoPilot “create an logarithmic rate from 0.066 to 10 Hz. divide into 128 steps for a dial”.