I think this really comes down to whether you were brought up with the Lexicon hardware sound and grown to like that as a benchmark for all reverbs.

If so then yes, it may very well sound the best to you. If not, if you've produced with other reverbs, software reverbs, then the audio examples of the Lexicon might not seem so impressive after all.

For me personally, listening to the examples (allbeight as non-HD youtube vids, so not best quality to listen to) I thought they were good, but in no way better than a lot of the good reverb plugins out there that cost a lot less.

Even if the price was more in-line with other plugin reverbs I still don't think I'd go for it. But that's just me. Big names make big selling points, so are able to command much higher prices.

Is there a demo available yet?

You can request one here:
http://www.audiopro.de/live/lexicon_47527_DEU_AP.html

There are probably other shops, who offer that service. Maybe Lexicon will do it now as well, since there's an "unofficial demo" now anyways.

It's the best only if someone believes it is. There's simply no way to define best that has any rational meaning. It's gear lust without reason.

If people believe price equals quality, particularly when it comes to lexicon (I assume it's the same company), please read this.

PLEASE READ THIS:

http://consumerist.com/2010/01/company-puts-500-blu-ray-play er-in-new-case-charges-3000-markup-and-gets-caught.html

Yes, Lexicon apparently has absolutely no qualms about charging a premium price for their name and nothing else. I'm not saying that's whats happening with this particular product, but the high price is in no way an indicator of quality. They charge $1800 because they can.

They have distinctly different characters, and complement each other very well, so it's not really a question of which is better. 2C-Aether does Eventide type reverbs very well, that is it excels with wide open spacious type reverbs that can be very useful in creating broad and very dimensional soundscapes. Lexicons are legendary for extremely lush and musically pleasing reverbs. Generally speaking that is.

I find Redline a good alternative price and quality wise to the native Lexicon PCM plugins. Redline nails the Lexicon sound very well, although the Lexicon plugins are more polished and refined in terms of the more minute details, in addition to offering 7 different algorithms/plugins. But apart from these differences, Redline is a very capable and convincing replication of the Lexicon sound and stands its own ground well.

We're very spoilt for choice these days on Reverbs. Ones immediately off the top of my head are:

Lexicon
Toraverb
EOS
ArtsAcoustic
Redline
Aether
CSR
SIR2
Altiverb
Pristine Space
Nebula

I'm sure there's many more that I've forgotten in both algorithmic and convolution based.

I'm still looking for a reverb plugin that can give a real holographic sense of space and have yet to hear it.

It is something I hear in film and tv quite a bit (example, the recent Merlin series on BBC, some of the castle room acoustics sounded incredible), whether its capturing a natural space or artificial I don't know (I would suspect artificial seeing as the dialogue is being recorded bia boom mic, unless they also used additional phase aligned stereo mics in same space).I would love to know what they use and any additional processes to create that amazing sense of 3D from just 2 channels.

No doubt that Lexicon make some of the top reverbs. But yeah, they charge a very steep price for their products, cashing in on their name, reputation, but also course the usually high quality of their products.

Imo they charge too much in relation to the price and quality of competing reverb makers. And it's no secret if one were to sell a used cardboard box as an piece of art, it would in the minds of many automatically be taken more seriously if sold at the price of $100 as oppose to $1, and companies like Lexicon and Waves have played that game to their great advantage, if not to the dismay of others. But the people that can afford it, don't care much about the money as the feeling of 'it just has to be better since it's so expensive'.

Of course, price has been used forever to denote added quality, but even a cursory glance at various product categories makes it obvious that the law of diminishing returns is very much in play, with increasing cost being rewarded with decreasing added value. Admittedly, precisely what "value" is depends on the person spending the money.

Yes those are some very nice plugins. A few others that come to mind are 2C-Aether, Ariesverb (not very well known, but extraodinary in sound and cpu use, roughly 0.5% cpu per instance and per core on an average multicore of today.) Eos, Breverb, Redline, etc.

In regards to a plugin that does very spacial three dimensional types reverbs, there's nothing on the native plugin market I'd recommend more than 2C-Aether. I was on the verge on purchasing an Eventide unit for these qualities before I came across Aether. A very capable reverb thats offers a vast range of programmability and character.

I can't reccomend giving it a try highly enough, if you havn't already done so. I'd be interested in your opinion of it.

I was a bit put off by the audio demos of Aether, but maybe I'll check out the demo version.

I actually just bought a couple other reverbs recently so this will have to seriously blow me away

I like CSR. Haven't tried Lexicon though.

I can't find the demo if there is one, how are people comparing it?

You missed the point completely.
Never mind