Lexicon Omega

Hey all,

Today I'd like to talk about the Lexicon Omega. For those of you unaware, the Omega is a little 4 channel audio interface made by legendary reverb aficionados, Lexicon. I bought this unit to use as the guts of my remote recording rig. For me it was an upgrade from the Tascam US-122 unit that I had used for the last 2 years and of which I have nothing but great things to say. So the Omega has a lot to live up to.
I made the upgrade because I had a few projects coming up immediately that required more than 2 discreet inputs. As a general rule, it's a good idea to make equipment upgrades only when the financial benefits of the upgrade are immediate. At least that's the way that I keep my gear lust in check.
So I got the Omega from Musicians Friend and went the B-stock route which saved me about $70 and put the unit in my hands for a little over $230. Certainly the only unit of it's nature in this price range. Especially since the laptop I use for remote recording doesn't have firewire which rules out nearly all other options with more than two channels.
It's a nice little unit with pretty intuitive controls although the direct monitoring control is not as functional as the one on the US-122. It's got 4 line inputs which worked great and sound clean to my ear (I hooked them up using the inserts from a Mackie mixer). It's also got 2 built-in mic pres. This is where I ran into problems. The pres worked fine with my SM57 or any other dynamic mic, but as soon as I hooked up a condenser and turned on the phantom power it was hum city. Horrible, horrible, unusable hum at any level. I figured this must be a cable or mic problem so I tried 3 other cables and 3 other mics in each preamp, but had the same problem. Bummer.
I contacted Lexicon customer service via email and got a response asking what mics I was using, etc. I replied that I had tried with lots of different mics and got no response. That was weeks ago. I sent another request for service two days ago and haven't gotten a response yet (although it is 4th of July time so people with real jobs might have off).
So that makes the whole thing nearly worthless for me as most of the remote recording I do is of classical ensembles where I'm only using a stereo pair of condensers. So for the time being, it's back to the Tascam for that.
But, when using external preamps, I must say I am pretty pleased with the Omega. It comes bundled with Cubase SE which I am not a big fan of but it does ok. The only problem I had is that when recording long, long passages sometimes a digital click would show up in the audio every once in a while. I imagine that this takes place when the screen is scrolling although I can't be sure.
This is a problem as well when I'm doing remote recording because usually it's continuous recording for 30 minutes or more at a time. At a conference I just recorded it was sometimes 80 minutes a shot. So I fix the clicks during the mix, but I shouldn't have to.
Another step back from the Tascam is that the Omega requires external power, not just USB. Not a big problem for me, but just one more cable to get tangled as I frantically set up for live event recording session.

So overall, I give the Omega 3 stars out of 5. It could easily be at 4 or 4.5 if only the phantom power worked right. Maybe it's just my unit, but tech support hasn't given me any reason to believe that.
But if you've got to go USB and need 4 ins, this is a decent bet as long as you have external mic pres.

On another note, as I write this I'm listening to a Pandora station based on Alexi Murdoch. If you don't know about Pandora, check it out. It's a great way to discover new music and listen to music that really fits your mood.

Rock on

Ben