these regions, which demotes the CX-7's overall sonic rating to middle of the road (or mediocre), in spite of its pretty good sonic rating in all other aspects. The warmth and upper bass regions of the CX-7 are very heavy, bloated, loose, woolly, boomy, and poorly defined. Then its lower bass region is the opposite, being downright weak. In these warmth and bass regions, it was night and day comparing the CX-7 to the Adcom and McCormack, which provide vastly superior kick, impact, and power in the lower bass, and then much better definition, control, and neutrally correct proportion in the upper bass and warmth regions.
      If the CX-7's problems here were limited to only the lower bass, the CX-7 might still be a viable candidate for driving satellite loudspeakers in a surround system where a separate amplifier would be driving the subwoofers. But the CX-7 is also fatally flawed in the warmth region (100-300 Hz), where all satellites are still operating, as well as the upper bass region, which you should ideally still be feeding to all surround loudspeakers in order to reproduce a true sense of you being immersed in a large alternative spatial venue all around you. So this also rules out the CX-7 as a suitable power amplifier for driving merely satellites.
      I personally like a rich amount of warmth, to give realistically natural body, weight, and heft to musical instruments, voices, and other sounds (i.e. to give what our parents called good tone). So I can appreciate and tolerate a large abundance of warmth energy. But the CX-7 goes way over the top, with such a corpulently bloated amount of warmth energy, and such a woolly, boomy quality to this excessive warmth energy, that you wind up actually hearing less information in the warmth region, in spite of its tonal emphasis. The CX-7's excess energy in the upper bass and warmth regions also lingers like an obscuring hangover fog after each bass transient, hiding important information for all parts of the spectrum in the temporal shadow that is immediately subsequent to each bass transient.
      This also means that the CX-7 is not suitable for use in critically assessing the sonic performance of other products, especially in the bass and warmth regions, where its problems would hide and mask any strengths or weaknesses of other links in the chain. The CX-7's circuit design is the same as the CX-5, and presumably very similar to that of Lexicon's LX line of power amplifiers, so Lexicon themselves may well have been handicapped in correctly assessing the sonic bass and warmth characteristics of their other products (vide the RT-10 review above), if as is likely they employed Lexicon power amplifiers for their listening.
      It's relatively easy for a solid state power amplifier to get the bass and warmth regions right, and the basic circuit and construction of the CX-7 seems robust enough to provide the needed bandwidth, current, and low source impedance. So it would hopefully be relatively easy for the Lexicon engineers to remedy the CX-7's problems at these lower frequencies, perhaps with input from the MLAS engineers, who in the past have achieved outstanding low frequency performance from MLAS solid state amplifiers.
      A final note. We are ethically obliged to tell you about an unusual break in period that is strongly advisable for the CX-7. Most audio products require some break in time for the sake of sounding their best. It is advisable to put the CX-7 through a different kind of break in exercise, for the sake of your safety. What's this all about? PC board assemblies made in some far eastern countries often employ some chemicals, which outgas and produce fumes with noxious particles. These fumes and particles have a pronounced acrid smell (somewhat like burning wiring) that can be very irritating. Studies have suggested that these fumes and particles are also carcinogenic, so you would be advised not to subject yourself and your family to these fumes and particles indoors. The CX-7 has a very strong dose of this odor when you first open the box. Fortunately, in the case of the CX-7, this odor and outgassing seems to dissipate itself within a month or so. So it would be advisable to do as we did, as soon as we detected this strong odor. Open the CX-7 box and bag outdoors, and allow the naked product to sit outdoors for a month. After this outdoor break in period, the noxious odor will have dissipated, so it is presumably safe to bring the product indoors and start using it. Since the CX-7 is tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, some of the possibly toxic particles, from the outgassing that has already occurred inside the plastic bag, will have deposited themselves on all parts of the chassis, so it would also be advisable to wipe off all external portions of the chassis with alcohol, and then wash your hands, after initially unpacking this amplifier. Incidentally, there is no indication on the box, on the product, or in the owner's manual, of what country this product is manufactured in, or where the PC board assembly might be made.


MC-8 Digital Controller

      Lexicon's MC series of digital controllers are fertile ground for the Lexicon engineers to really strut their stuff, doing what they know how to do best from their long experience in pro audio. Even their second tier MC-8 reviewed here boasts control features that far surpass what we've seen in other high end controllers and surround processors, regardless of price (though, at $6000 unbalanced, $7000 balanced, even the second tier MC-8 is more expensive than many other top tier high end processors). The MC-8's control features are superb in power, flexibility, and comprehensiveness. The user interface is at once sophisticated and elegant. The engineers at Lexicon who designed the control system are to be congratulated for their work in producing a landmark, which other brands would do well to learn from.

Control System Performance

      The controller or surround processor sits at the heart of a home theater or surround sound system. It not only has to handle many types of signals, but it has to be able to do many types of things with these various signals, and for many types of differing user systems and differing user applications. Ideally, then, its control system should be very powerful, complex, flexible, and comprehensive. Paradoxically, the user interface for all these control features should ideally be intuitively straightforward, simple, and easy to operate.
      It's difficult for designers of surround processors or controllers to strike the best balance between these seemingly opposite desiderata. Too many of the processors we have evaluated give you the worst of both worlds rather than the best of both worlds. These other processors have unfortunate limits to their power and flexibility (imposed perhaps by cost considerations or from fear of making the user interface too complex), and then at the same time their user interface is already too dauntingly confusing or counterintuitive (do I press a button or enter a menu to accomplish this? which button do I press to access which menu to accomplish this?). The Lexicon controller triumphantly gives you the best of both worlds. Its control system is by far the most powerful, flexible, and complex of any processor. Yet its control system is also (in most aspects) the most conceptually elegant, straightforwardly simple, and intuitive for the user to navigate.
      How did the Lexicon engineers achieve this, the best of both worlds? The key is software control. The control system engineers at Lexicon, trained by the complexities of control systems of the pro audio world, understand better than their counterparts at consumer audio companies that virtually everything can be accomplished by software instead of hardware. Thus, where consumer audio processors assign specific hard wired functions to various buttons, switches, and signal jacks, the Lexicon escapes these traditional restrictions, accomplishing all this assignation and control via software. The Lexicon engineers also let software do all the hard work, so you don't have to.
      Here are but some of the highlights that make Lexicon's software driven control system so much more powerful and flexible in capability, yet at the same time easier and more straightforward to use.
      Other processors and control centers assign specific signal input jacks to specific functions. In contrast, the MC-8 gives you 8 sets of dual jacks for analog signal inputs (plus 4 jacks for digital inputs). You can then configure these 8 sets of jacks, under easy software control, to perform the functions you want them to. For example, you can configure them to act as 8 different stereo (2 channel) inputs, or 5 stereo inputs plus one 5.1 channel analog input (e.g. for playback of the 5.1 channels of analog output from a universal player), or 2 stereo inputs plus two sets of 5.1 channel analog inputs. Then, under menu software control, you can individually assign names and sonic processing attributes to any and all of these functionally chosen inputs.
      The MC-8 provides a host of signal control functions that are simply not available with other processors. Some of these controls are of marginal interest to purists, but nevertheless will be useful to many listeners, such as bass and treble controls, a spectral tilt control, and a variable contour loudness control (instead of the fixed single contour loudness switch that used to be common on audio gear).
      Then, other powerful MC-8 controls are vital to getting the best sound from a surround sound system, and should be included on every surround processor. For example, the MC-8 offers not only selectable low pass filter frequencies for feeding your subwoofers, but also selectable high pass filter frequencies for feeding your various main and surround loudspeakers, where most other processors offer only a simple choice between large (full range) and small (80 Hz high pass) for their high pass feed.
      Furthermore, this selectable MC-8 high pass filter offers a very wide range of finely graded frequencies to choose from, all the way down to 30 Hz (plus of course full range). Thus, you can flexibly use this filter in many ways. You can use it as an infrasonic filter, to merely lessen excess excursion and modulation distortion from your main or surround loudspeakers (this would be very useful with for example the wide range Verity Taminos, to allow nearly full range surround reproduction from them while preventing overload of their small woofers). Or you can use it to conventionally cross over from your subwoofers to your main loudspeakers, perhaps with a different setting for front versus surround loudspeakers if you are constrained to employing smaller loudspeakers for surrounds than you have up front. Or you can use it to deliberately overlap your subwoofers with your satellites if the satellites are too lean in the upper bass or warmth region of crossover. Or, alternatively, you can use it to underlap your subwoofers with your satellites if your satellites are too warm or boomy at their bottom end, or if your subwoofers at their top end are too boomy or have a vent resonance that needs subduing. Or you can set this filter to specifically tame a boomy overshoot at the bass resonance frequency of your vented satellites, by cutting them off above this resonance frequency. Most importantly, this flexible high pass filter allows you to seamlessly blend your satellites with your subwoofers, to optimize the sonic performance of their interaction, and to hopefully also get as much upper bass as possible from all your surround satellites, so you can hear that true surround sound in the upper bass which is so crucial for experiencing true immersion in the large space of the alternative venue encoded on good surround recordings.
      You might think that a processor with all this extra control power and flexibility would require a remote with many more buttons and much more complexity. But in fact the Lexicon remote is far simpler than that for any other processor, with far fewer buttons to master. The reason for this simplicity is that virtually everything is controlled by the software of a menu tree. Furthermore, there is only a single menu tree, so you don't even have to remember (as you do with other processors and remotes) which button to press to enter which menu to accomplish your goal. This menu driven control system does mean that you sometimes have to press a button more often, to arrive at the correct branch of the menu to accomplish your goal, than with other processor remotes, but, with fewer buttons to choose among and press, the process winds up being just as fast in the end, while also being conceptually much easier and more intuitive.
      Indeed, the MC-8 remote control is so simple, with so few buttons, that it even lacks buttons that are considered de rigeur on every other remote. Shockingly, you won't even find a button that says Menu or Setup, to enter the menu tree, as you do on every other remote. Nor will you find the universal button that says Enter, Select, or OK, to confirm and lock in a menu choice. Are these omissions an incompetent oversight by the Lexicon engineers? No, they are actually emblematic of the sophisticated conceptual elegance of the Lexicon control system.
      To master the Lexicon remote and menu control system, all you have to do is understand one very simple concept. In the western world, we read from left to right, so to go forward in our reading we go to the right. Likewise, to go forward in the Lexicon control system menu, all you have to do is go to the right, and to go backwards (back toward the trunk of the decision tree), all you have to do is go to the left. The usual 4 way rocker, with 4 arrows, can be pressed to go left or right, to go backward or forward, and of course up or down, to go up or down a menu list. Thus, if you want to first enter the menu control system, when there is no menu showing on the OSD (on screen display), you obviously want to go forward, deeper into the menu than you now are, so all you have to do is press the right arrow button. Presto, you're into the single main menu, and so there's no need for a separate button on the remote that says Menu or Setup. Likewise, after you have selected a choice from a list (using of course the up and down buttons), and you then want to enter or confirm that choice, what you really want to do (conceptually) is go forward with your choice, so you simply press the right arrow button again, so there's no need for a separate button on the remote that says Enter, Select, or OK. Now that is engineering elegance at its conceptual finest.
      With the MC-8 being so powerful and flexible in its control functions, the menu tree is naturally complex. But it is so logically laid out that it is very intuitive, and virtually self guiding. The thick owner's manual for the MC-8 is also there to help in case you get confused, and it explicitly lays out the menu tree steps for all the many control functions. Lexicon has even thoughtfully printed this instructional manual on sturdy glossy stock, anticipating the wear and tear of many page turnings (the instruction manuals for the simpler disc player and power amplifier are printed on cheaper matte stock).
      In the interests of being thorough and objective, we should make note of a few quibbles we have with the control software design that is otherwise so elegant and intuitive.
      First, when there is a menu list with three or more choices to select among, the OSD shows the full list, and you can simply move up and down the on screen list by using the up and down arrow buttons on the remote, which produces the expected highlighting on screen of your choice. Thus, in this case there is perfect coordination and consistency between what your hand is doing and what you see on screen. However, when a menu list contains only two choices to select between, what you see on screen is inconsistent with what your hand is doing, producing a counterintuitive, confusing, and wasteful procedure. Your hand must still use the up and down arrows, but the screen does not show both choices in the list in this case, instead merely toggling between showing one single choice or the other. Thus, you don't even get to see what the other choice is, in the hidden list.
      What is worse, and ergonomically confusing, and wasteful of your time and energy, is that the actions are inconsistent and not related. The screen toggles, but the buttons don't. You can't just press the up button repeatedly (or the down button repeatedly) to toggle between the two choices, even though the screen is toggling between two choices at one single screen location (which ergonomically implies that one single control button should similarly toggle). Instead, you must choose the correct button, the up button or the down button, to go to the other choice, depending on whether the single choice now displayed on screen happens to be the upper choice in the hidden list or the lower choice in the hidden list. How can you know whether the single choice now displayed on screen happens to be the upper choice in the list or the lower choice? You can't know, because the screen display doesn't show you the complete list (with your present choice highlighted, as it does do when there are three or more items in the list). All you can do is randomly hit one of the arrow buttons (say the up arrow for this example), and if nothing happens on screen (because say the single choice displayed on screen happens to have already been the upper choice on the hidden list of the two choices that you don't see), then you know that you have hit the wrong arrow button and so you must hit the other arrow button. That's ergonomically wasteful and confusing, and the consequent distraction and delay can foil your attempt to instantly compare the two options, to see which you prefer.
      A second quibble concerns the software tree for confirming one choice and then wanting to compare it to another choice. This quibble applies even to lists that have three or more choices. Suppose that you want to decide whether a given film soundtrack or surround music program sounds better with one kind of decoding/surround enhancement or another. You make your first selection from the menu list, and then simply hit the right arrow button to confirm and enter your choice. Presto, you are now listening to your first choice. So far, so good.
      But now you want to instantaneously compare this first choice to another of the many enhancement choices offered by the MC-8 and by other processors (e.g. Pro Logic II music vs. Pro Logic II surround vs. Pro Logic II with THX vs. DTS, etc.). So you simply hit the left arrow button once, to take you back one logical menu page, one step backward in the menu tree, from confirming your first choice to again seeing the list of choices. This does indeed show the menu page with the list.
      So now you should be able to use the up/down arrow buttons to quickly make a new choice, correct? Wrong. Though you are now successfully back on the menu page with the list, the up/down buttons have not been activated by the MC-8 software. In order to activate these needed up/down arrow buttons, you have to first hit the left arrow button a second time, going back toward the trunk of the menu tree to the page before the menu list, and then you have to hit the right arrow button, to again re-enter the desired menu list page from the left.
      In other words, the software seems to have an unergonomic bug whereby you can't use the up/

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