Lexicon Omega computer interface

Hi forum! My first post. I'm very interested in the NI bundle for under $1K. Do any of you have the Lexicon Omega? I bought it a few months ago for my modest home studio and was very satisfied until I began researching soft synth apps and other plug ins that seem to require ASIO drivers which the Omega doesn't have.

I called Lexicon. They aren't making any promises for ASIO in the near future.

So how important is ASIO with NI? I downloaded a few of the demos. They seem to work fine within cakewalk Pro Trax (Pro Trax is part of the Omega bundle) as a DXI plug in. I don't think I will be able to use NI software by itself however and I think that might be a pain when I'm tweakin at night. I might not always want to use Pro Trax or Sonar 3 just to get into NI.

Any experience out there with the Omega or general advice regarding the need for ASIO drivers would be greatly appreciated. I'm very happy with the Omega. It's a great USB interface with great converters for the $ IMHO.

Thank you,

dochonda

 

NI products support also the DirectSound interface which you can use if you don't have ASIO.

 

Thanks Bingo. I'll look into that.

Also...regarding NI demos...has anyone had problems with crashing? I have windows XP home with an 2.3 GHZ Athlon. Do demos have a tendency to crash vs. the actual software you purchase?

dochonda

 

I had no crashings, however you'll have to be careful with that USB interface, you must realize that audio (and MIDI) is streamed through the USB interface and depending on the implementation, it could be a headache specially using a softsynth.

 

There tend to be a lot of complaints about demos diving on things the full versions have no problems with. I can't guarantee the full version will work fine for you, but its likely it will.

 

Any other opinions/comments on the ASIO driver issue. I'm having difficulty getting my midi keyboard to play NI demos through my Omega. Searched this topic and found a thread with a potential solution. Have any of you heard of ASIO4ALL?

dochonda