This is not USB 2, but USB 1.1, which has been known to show a lack of willing bandwidth when asked to do too much by way of streaming digital audio. This is perhaps the only real surprise regarding the Omega: not that Lexicon are making an audio interface, but, given the way things are going - or at least given the way I'd like things to be going! - that they've made USB their interfacing protocol of choice. The Omega connects to the host Mac (Mac OS X only) or Windows PC (XP/2000) via a USB connection. The world moves on, however, and changes in computers and their interfacing standards mean that when Lexicon decided to produce a new audio interface - the Omega, subject of this review - they took a different approach. The Core 2 (reviewed SOS May 2000) could also accommodate a reverb daughterboard, albeit one based on a lower-end Lexicon product than the PCM90. This was followed two years later by the Core 2 system (Core 32 was the name of the Studio system's PCI card), a much more affordable ASIO-compliant PCI card/breakout box combo. Photo: Mike CameronThis is not an entirely new move for the ambience-meisters: Lexicon produced an expensive PCI card/breakout box combo dubbed the Studio back in 1998 (reviewed SOS July 1998), a major draw of which was the option to tag on what was effectively a PCM90 reverb in daughterboard form. Yet to another market, they mean home theatre electronics - and if the product under review here is a success, we will also learn to associate them with desktop audio. High-end, mid-range, affordable, software plug-ins. The Lexicon name, for most SOS readers, is synonymous with 'reverberation'.

Does their new USB-based Omega system have what it takes to challenge the likes of Digidesign, Edirol and M-Audio? It's been nearly four years since Lexicon last produced an audio interface.

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