lexicon omega

The Lexicon Omega is a USB 24-bit 44.1/48 kHz 8x4x2 interface with:

• 2 XLR mic inputs with TRS 6.35 mm inserts, 20dB pad switches and +48V phantom power switch
• 4 TRS 6.35 mm jack balanced line inputs
• 1 TS 6.35 mm jack instrument hi-Z unbalanced input (alternative to line in #3)
• 1 stereo S/PDIF coaxial RCA input and output
• 2 TRS 6.35 mm balanced line outputs
• 1 stereo TRS 6.35 mm headphone output
• 1 MIDI input and output
• 4 input buses (these are the 4 inputs seen by the computer)
• 2 output buses

The Omega has hardware volume control for each analog input and for the analog output, plus a potentiometer for mixing the direct no-latency monitoring output with the playback output from the computer.

The inputs are assigned to the buses in pairs (line in 1-2, line in 3-4, mic 1-2, S/PDIF in) via hardware switches: each pair can be independently assigned to the 1-2 or to the 3-4 buses (or none), the signals sharing the same bus are then mixed and sent to the computer (except the S/PDIF input that can't be mixed whith the analog ones and can be only assigned to the bus 1-2).

This means that you can record a maximum of 4 track at a time, but with a maximum of 2 digital and 6 analog inputs, premixed on the 4 tracks.

The Omega can also be used standalone, as a preamp/mixer.

It fully works out of the box, no additional software is needed.

Tested in Debian Sqeeze, Debian Sid, and some version of Ubuntu (I don't remember wich one, maybe 10.xx).

The only things I couldn't test are the S/PDIF output and the inserts, but I have no reason to think they won't (the S/PDIF input works, and the inserts are just hardware things).

• Forum post. emarsk using it as of December 2012