IK CSR - has anyone copied over the original Lexicon PCM90/91 presets?

[machinated]

Is it possible to come close to the PCM96 Chamber using the IKM reverbs?

No, not really. I believe the PCM96 Chamber algorithm is derived from the 960L and is somewhat new compared to the other algorithms.

CSR Room is based on the Ambience algorithm, not Room/Chamber as far as I know. The available parameters correspond closer to the Ambience algo at least.

I asked Gemini to give me some [AI SLOP]

So, as usual with these chat services, they just make stuff up. The parameters are incorrect, the values aren't right. Some of these presets are available in Relab LX480 so it's easy to compare values.

I've been using a mixture of Gemini, Chat GPT and Claude to document a lot about the presets and different units and algorithms etc, and I've probably spent more time correcting mistakes in it than what I've got out of it. They're all a bit of a nightmare, honestly.

[jamcat]

Small bump for 2026. I've created spreadsheets and organised the presets by algorithm type, which should make copying the settings over somewhat more tolerable than doing it into CSR directly.

PM me for the spreadsheet.

CSR has (I believe) Concert Hall, Rich Plate, Ambience and Inverse. LX480 should be able to handle much of the Random Hall stuff. I believe the Concert Hall has some additional processing in the HW like a compressor/expand/eq which aren't in the plugin, so any presets using those won't map the same unless those are bypassed.

What do these spreadsheets entail? Do they have all of the settings values from the original unit? How did you get the data for these spreadsheets?

If you have each parameter and its value for each preset, you could probably get AI to generate CSR presets without too much trouble. CSR presets are just XML files.

[machinated]

Small bump for 2026. I've created spreadsheets and organised the presets by algorithm type, which should make copying the settings over somewhat more tolerable than doing it into CSR directly.

PM me for the spreadsheet.

CSR has (I believe) Concert Hall, Rich Plate, Ambience and Inverse. LX480 should be able to handle much of the Random Hall stuff. I believe the Concert Hall has some additional processing in the HW like a compressor/expand/eq which aren't in the plugin, so any presets using those won't map the same unless those are bypassed.

What do these spreadsheets entail? Do they have all of the settings values from the original unit? How did you get the data for these spreadsheets?

If you have each parameter and its value for each preset, you could probably get AI to generate CSR presets without too much trouble. CSR presets are just XML files.

I’ve actually just ordered a PCM91 so maybe in the next week I can do this. I already have the presets sorted by algorithm, and I’ve identified the presets that use the algos in CSR. many use random hall or splits so they can’t be done (although random hall has other models….). I need to check parameter ranges match between plugin and hw. Maybe I can port the RHall presets to relab.

CSR concert hall doesn’t have the spatial eq or dynamics so the presets won’t be totally 1:1.

[machinated]

PCM91 has arrived, I’ve started documenting the preset settings.

There are some small differences between with attack/build up and shape/dispersion - in CSR these are % and on the HW they are 0-255. If Link is enabled, then shape is proportionally linked to room size (the max value gets limited based on size). I guess a % makes more sense than 0-255 but working out the exact behaviour is a bit beyond me.

The HW has 3 sets of delays:

- Reflections
- Echo
- Delay

The plugin only has 2 of these.

I also noticed I had to adjust some settings by ear to get them more similar. I guess the way room lengths is calculated isn’t an exact science with these units.

I’ve only checked some Rich Plate presets so far but they’re remarkably similar sounding. With some little tweaks it’s hard to say one is better than the other and I’m sure someone with deep knowledge of how the plugin was modelled would probably get closer still.

Kind of wild for a 2006 plugin (made from even older code). It’s funny looking through old threads here and at that point barely anyone cared whether it sounded like a PCM91 - loads of comments were saying “does it sound realistic?” “is the plate like a real plate?”. Quite amusing how far we’ve come with plugins. I guess being spoiled for choice for great sounds has meant that parity with HW becomes a bigger selling point.

[planetearth]

So, as usual with these chat services, they just make stuff up. The parameters are incorrect, the values aren't right. Some of these presets are available in Relab LX480 so it's easy to compare values.

I've been using a mixture of Gemini, Chat GPT and Claude to document a lot about the presets and different units and algorithms etc, and I've probably spent more time correcting mistakes in it than what I've got out of it. They're all a bit of a nightmare, honestly.

Are you going to post that document anywhere when you finish? I'd be interested to read it.

Steve

[machinated]

So, as usual with these chat services, they just make stuff up. The parameters are incorrect, the values aren't right. Some of these presets are available in Relab LX480 so it's easy to compare values.

I've been using a mixture of Gemini, Chat GPT and Claude to document a lot about the presets and different units and algorithms etc, and I've probably spent more time correcting mistakes in it than what I've got out of it. They're all a bit of a nightmare, honestly.

Are you going to post that document anywhere when you finish? I'd be interested to read it.

Steve

As in the text transcripts? they’re all spread across multiple services and kind of garbled to read.

Most recent discovery of CSR. The plugin essentislly ALWAYS has “Link” enabled. Per the PCM91 manual:

Link
This control is available in all algorithms except Ambience. When Link is set to On, the reverb time (Mid Rt) and Spread scale linearly as the Size control is varied. For some special effects, Mid Rt, Spread and Size can be unlinked.

So there could be some presets with Link disabled, and then some spread parameters that go beyond what the plugin is able to produce. Because Spread in the plugin is a % that is scaled from room size, it’s a bit more fiddly than absolute numbers.

Another area I’m trying to figure out is are the reflections/echoes/delays. On the HW they range from 0-200%, on the plugin it’s in dB. I need to figure out how these behaviours relate to each other.

[machinated]

Some more findings.

In CSR Plate, if the Bass Multiplier is set to 1x, changing the crossover should have no effect on the decay time (the time should be consistent for both sides of the crossover.

On the hardware, this works as expected - the sound doesn't change if Low RT is set to 1x and crossover is adjusted. On the CSR Plate plugin, at 1x it still changes the sound. On Inverse, if the equivalent controls are set, changing crossover has no effect (like you'd expect). It's harder to tell on Hall because of the modulation but I think that also behaves. Seems like a bug on CSR Plate to me, but who knows?

The ranges for the crossover are quite different between HW and plugin too.

And another small difference - the maximum and minimum decay times are linked to Room Size, as we know. The values we get are marginally different between the two for equivalent room sizes. They also sound different, so I suspect the way CSR calculates the decay time is a different way to Lexicon. I think this has been discussed before on forums.

[simon.a.billington]

keep in mind the older CSR Hall sounds different than the newer ones from IK Multimedia. i made a video long time ago which showed it.

Yeah I was a bit surprised by thew difference in sonics with all their reverbs in Mixbox/SampleTank. It looked to have the same branding, but different sound.

I'm all good if they want improve things, but if it sounds different enough they really need to come up with a different identity for their modules. Not that Mixbox matters any more, IK have decided to drop that in favour of focusing on T-Racks.

[jamcat]

If you reconstruct the PCM91 presets in CSR, I would be interested in downloading them.

[Caine123]

keep in mind the older CSR Hall sounds different than the newer ones from IK Multimedia. i made a video long time ago which showed it.

Yeah I was a bit surprised by thew difference in sonics with all their reverbs in Mixbox/SampleTank. It looked to have the same branding, but different sound.

I'm all good if they want improve things, but if it sounds different enough they really need to come up with a different identity for their modules. Not that Mixbox matters any more, IK have decided to drop that in favour of focusing on T-Racks.

it was the CSR Hall Tracks Version 3 I used heavily in the past, then i had many issues reactivating it and here is where the IK crapstory began for me, then i had to update to Tracks 4 or 5 in the past and first it of course didnt load the old instances obiously so i had to replace all my old ones in demo mode and wondered why my exports now sound different, a A/B showed that the old CSR Hall sounds heavily different. IK never got back on that, of course not lol. making old projects sounding different and well i replaced them anyways now.

[machinated]

keep in mind the older CSR Hall sounds different than the newer ones from IK Multimedia. i made a video long time ago which showed it.

I was a bit surprised by thew difference in sonics with all their reverbs in Mixbox/SampleTank. It looked to have the same branding, but different sound.

I think I found an old forum post where the Sampletank version was essentially an earlier version of CSR, I guess it could be to save CPU or optimised for the platform in some way.

Given IK’s history with bug fixing it’s hard to say one way or another, and I’m not sure I can see them putting more money into developing the plugin and fixing old bugs when there’s so little interest in this plugin in 2026. I’d love to see it properly supported and maintained but I’ve also got to be realistic with where it is. The funny thing is, if someone wanted to release a solid reverb plugin in 2026 based on some HW, a PCM91 isn’t a bad place to start. I think it’s still somewhat relevant as a workhorse Lexicon with a mix of classic and newer Lexicon sounds.

[machinated]

If you reconstruct the PCM91 presets in CSR, I would be interested in downloading them.

I’ll have to see how I go. I’m slowly entering parameter values from the HW into a spreadsheet. It’s quite a lot of work to:

- enter and check parameter values
- work out parameter ranges/scaling/dependencies between parameters
- entering values into plugins like CSR/PCM Native/LX480, trying to account for design and parameter differences
- listening, adjusting by ear, trying to make a rational decision on anything that may be missing

I’ve made quite a few presets that sound great, and I’d love to have a complete library of “Lexicon inspired” presets to download to expand these existing plugins. I love all of them (and the HW) but I find each doesn’t have a huge choice of great presets to pick from.

[simon.a.billington]

keep in mind the older CSR Hall sounds different than the newer ones from IK Multimedia. i made a video long time ago which showed it.

Yeah I was a bit surprised by thew difference in sonics with all their reverbs in Mixbox/SampleTank. It looked to have the same branding, but different sound.

I'm all good if they want improve things, but if it sounds different enough they really need to come up with a different identity for their modules. Not that Mixbox matters any more, IK have decided to drop that in favour of focusing on T-Racks.

it was the CSR Hall Tracks Version 3 I used heavily in the past, then i had many issues reactivating it and here is where the IK crapstory began for me, then i had to update to Tracks 4 or 5 in the past and first it of course didnt load the old instances obiously so i had to replace all my old ones in demo mode and wondered why my exports now sound different, a A/B showed that the old CSR Hall sounds heavily different. IK never got back on that, of course not lol. making old projects sounding different and well i replaced them anyways now.

Given IK’s history with bug fixing it’s hard to say one way or another, and I’m not sure I can see them putting more money into developing the plugin and fixing old bugs when there’s so little interest in this plugin in 2026. I’d love to see it properly supported and maintained but I’ve also got to be realistic with where it is. The funny thing is, if someone wanted to release a solid reverb plugin in 2026 based on some HW, a PCM91 isn’t a bad place to start. I think it’s still somewhat relevant as a workhorse Lexicon with a mix of classic and newer Lexicon sounds.

I guess that's one thing that Waves is good at. Regardless of the bad vibes they seem attract from some users they are very good at maintaining backwards compatibility. A plugin designed 30 years ago will still sound the same today. The downside there is it makes them continuously build new plugins as opposed to add features to older plugins.

I get it, but I figured out a way updating the sonics of a plugin could be done yet at the same time also preserves the classic sound and behaviour, future proofing it. It's doable and doesn't require alot of extra effort, just a little fore planning.

In fact I wish all developers would future-proof their plugins, not just Waves. IK being the leading candidate here.

Sure, the older plugins will work on our system for a while until that time comes when they don't. We could take advantage of time we have and place all the old plugins with the new ones, one by one, copying the settings and double checking everything sounds consistent enough, but that is extremely time consuming.

It would be just be better for everyone all around, including IK, if they just future-proofed their plugins. No more disgruntled users, no bad press, everyone wins.

Fortunately I personally didn't use CSR for its Lexicon style sound, so that never didn't matter to me much. Deprecating half their plugins and not future proofing their current ones is a much bigger issue for me. I must be a glutton for punishment as I still like to use their plugins regardless.

[Examigan]

If you reconstruct the PCM91 presets in CSR, I would be interested in downloading them.

Me too