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Lexicon Omega |
Lexicon’s latest offering the Omega is a comprehensive USB recording interface for the PC and Mac. Hang on… Lexicon the reverb company? Why a recording product?? The simple answer is that they’ve created a very attractive package; we’ll find out some further details ahead.
Recently Lexicon’s Recording and Broadcast Manager Greg Hogan visited Australia from the US to talk about Lexicon and the direction of the company. It’s true that Lexicon have earned their reputation building digital effect units; their first box was produced way back in 1971. Lexicon also have a history with digital-recording dating back to 1988 when they manufactured one of the first digital audio workstations called Opus. The Omega is now their prime focus and on first glance it bears some similarity to Digidesign’s M-Box. Lexicon have packed some impressive features in and they include software (Pro Tracks for PC, Bias Deck for Mac), audio input/output, MIDI input/output, digital input/output (S/PDIF format), microphone pre-amps, and a Lexicon software reverb.
Lexicon is part of the Harman International Company, and the microphone pre-amps on the Omega have been taken directly from the solid-state portion of the DBX 386 pre-amp. A visit to Harman’s website will give you an idea of the breadth of products that the company incorporates (DBX, Crown, JBL, Soundcraft etc.). Most of these are now developed under the one roof in Utah, so the Omega is the result of a fair accumulation of expertise.
I tried the Omega out with a Pentium 4-2.4 GHz with Windows XP and 512MB of RAM. The Omega connects via USB and is fairly straightforward to install if instructions are followed closely. The included Pro Tracks software is a customized version of Cakewalk software taken from their Sonar/Home Studio line. Pro Tracks was simple to operate and when in doubt the functions of each button could be revealed by holding the mouse overhead for a description. The Omega’s audio drivers performed well, and through Pro Tracks I could select the WDM Kernel-Streaming option for low latencies/delay (down to 10ms). I’ll add here that the Omega actually has four audio inputs and as I discovered, these can all be used simultaneously. Soft synth plug-ins are provided with Pro Tracks including Tassman SE, DR008 (drum sounds), and Dreamstation. Also provided is Pantheon, a Lexicon reverb with a good list of presets as well as full editing ability.
What about Cubase users or those that require an ASIO driver to run their programs successfully? Greg Hogan indicated that at Lexicon they were already using ASIO drivers for the Omega. With some additional testing, Lexicon plans to release ASIO drivers for Windows XP and Windows 2000.
What I like about the Omega is that you could pull it out of the box and, apart from obvious accessories (mics, cables etc.) start recording right away. The Omega represents good value for money and makes an attractive option for both the entry level musician and more experienced recording musician wanting a quality interface.