I've done a ton of research on USB audio interfaces since they first debuted. I was also doing 4-track audio recording on a 66MHz 486 with 8MB RAM back in the mid-nineties (which got me into my career in computers). So I go way back with computer audio, and have spent & wasted a ton of money on recording gear.

I've also made mistakes (Tascam US-122, Digidesign), and learned from them. After my misadventure with the Tascam, I waited a long time for the scene to mature before jumping in again.



Here are some of the things I learned (your mileage may vary):

- Buy a device as simple as possible to fill my needs.
Room to grow is good, but don't waste money on tons of features if you probably won't use them. If it's just you, you don't need tons of inputs.

- You often don't get what you pay for.
People equate spending more money with "higher quality", but oftentimes you're spending money for more features, not higher quality. A mixer with 4 or 6 channels might have just as good sound quality as a larger 16-track model with built-in effects costing four times as much. A very expensive audio interface might cost a lot more than another, but have inferior preamps.

- Manufacturers mess with the specs, especially preamplifier specs.
I explain more on this later with preamp specs (also see my US-122L review). But it's also common to advertise ultra-high datarate recording, like 24-bit/96KHz, but the device might have compromised features at that bitrate, such as half-duplex, or simply might not perform adequately at that bitrate, effectively making the feature null or nominal. Also, don't let ultrahigh sampling rates lure you from following your otherwise common sense, because you have to ask yourself how often you'll really be using sampling rates that high. To me, bit depth is far more important, and at the time of this writing, nobody's gone over 24 bit word depth, and who knows if they ever will (I'd like to see 32-bit). And the vast majority of external interfaces today are 24-bit capable at 48KHz, which is really what is important, and which is a really usable bitrate. Your device should function flawlessly at this speed.

- You can do tons of research and still end up buying the wrong thing. Buy with a good return policy, and only when you have time to test it immediately. Call and/or email the company's tech support BEFORE you buy, with a technical question, to see how they deal with you.
The Tascam US-122 was designed defectively (in my opinion) so that almost all Windows-based computers would freeze on standby or hibernate, making them not truly windows-compatible, which then also means false advertising in my opinion. There was no mention of this in the manual, none on their support pages, and tech support ignored people over this issue (and just about every other issue). Their manual makes you think you have an "incompatible" USB chipset or something, leading many people to buy a lot of gear trying to make their device windows-compatible before realizing the thing was just designed that way. My point here is that something can seem great, and really would be great, but one "killer" feature (in a bad way) ruins the deal. And bad tech support can do that as well. Digidesign, another company whose products I'll never buy again, who also has made products in my experience falsely advertising "Windows compatibility", refused to answer tech support questions without me paying for it, even though it was their crappy drivers which were the problem! (I never did get that Digidesign PCI card working in anything beyond Windows 98!) So right there you have $600 worth of life lessons just on two devices, which I was never able to use like I hoped.

- Bus-power audio interfaces are always compromises, even Firewire ones.
Bus-powered audio interfaces will in general have more challenges and compromises overall than externally-powered ones. Also, PCI interfaces will in general have fewer issues than external interfaces. But with good choices, you should be able to get the convenience of a bus-powered external interface with only a small amount of compromise. The key is whether the compromise is a deal-breaker to you. Most importantly, USB bus power is very underpowered: 5V at 500mA. And the quality and consistency of the power given by computers varies wildly, unfortunately. So a huge amount of electronics wizardry has to do into making an ultra-quiet, stable doohickey. The universal compromise I've seen for USB is in mic/preamp gain. You just don't see USB bus-powered devices with "high" gain levels (i.e. +60dB). To me, this was the most difficult compromise, because part of the allure of bus power was mobile recording, including nature and ambient sounds, which require high gain levels with very low noise. There's nothing more challenging for equipment, in my opinion. And yet, with the Lambda, I decided that fewer dB was worth the tradeoff of not having to carry a bulky, heavy, external power supply. Which leads me to my next point.

- Get the device you will USE MOST, not "the best" one.
Many of us gearheads are willing to drop a lot of money for "the best" or "highest quality" device. Something with great sound, and tons of features. And we end up not using it so much, either because of its complexity, or because of its bulk or lack of portability. The most important discipline any gearhead can develop is to control himself and really ask himself straightforward: will I really use that $80 pocket guitar FX/preamp more than the $300 rackmounted guitar FX/preamp? Buy what you will most likely USE MORE.

- Firewire is not necessarily "better" than USB.
Firewire devices generally cater to Macs. Which is a bad thing if your laptop runs Windows! Even if a firewire device does "both", usually the Mac drivers will run more solidly and have the most development and attention. Firewire devices have data timing and transmission problems just like USB, contrary to popular belief, and also sometimes have problems playing nice with other firewire devices, just like USB. Firewire is perceived much like Macs are: totally stable, without problem, and totally easy to use, and people who do support know that Macs have their own share of problems, and firewire too.

In an ideal world, is Firewire better for audio than USB? Probably. But is it better for YOU? Maybe not. Because virtually all Windows laptops DON'T have firewire bus power (6 pin) built-into them. And the ones which DO, inexplicably tend to be the "ultra-portable" variety, or at least smaller than normal, i.e. some of the Acer TravelMate series. Small & ultraportable laptops have small batteries, which makes them less-suitable for bus-powering anything. What's more, Apple is de-emphasizing firewire, and moving towards USB. Some apple laptops now also don't include powered/6-pin firewire! Is it worth spending a grand or more on a laptop with 6-pin bus power? Well, if you haven't bought the laptop yet, maybe. But if you have, your money (or at least my money) would be much better-spent on quality microphones or other things which could include your sound quality more, even getting some paid training/schooling.

If you're okay with externally powering everything (i.e. in-home or in-studio use only, and you don't mind the cords, or you need that extra gain), then Firewire is great--but then I ask why are you getting an external audio device at all? Potential answers: external devices are much easier to access, and external devices can be extended away from computers to reduce computer noise. But USB exension cords are cheap, as are long mic cables. Firewire exension cords are not. I once connected two cheap 15-ft USB extension cables to my first bus-powered audio interface, then extended it even further with long mic cables, to do nature recording from inside a building, which also eliminated hard drive and fan noise (by the way, get a very quiet laptop if you plan to do on-lo recording!).

- USB2 is not necessarily "better" than USB1.
Most audio transmission doesn't need more than USB1. And USB1 is, from my understanding, counterintuitively more stable at transmitting audio than USB2. USB2 is necessary for new ultra-fidelity audio, like 24-bit at 96KHz. USB1 will do fine at 24-bits at 48KHz, which I am a fan of, and is my default recording mode. And I think USB1 can stretch and do half-duplex 24/96. I just don't see the benefit of doubling the datarate & file size to get 96KHz sampling for anything but synthesizer sampling/looping, in which case you won't need full duplex anyway. Most audio interfaces say they are USB 2.0 I think to prevent from scaring away people. Maybe it will play nicer with other devices being USB2 compatible, who knows. Digidesign, who I still hate, did a bold move making their Mbox2 limited to USB1. To me, having a USB2 audio interface is kind of like having a USB2 printer. If it ever hits USB2 speeds, it's considered "low speed USB 2", and if there is a need for it, it's more for other devices than itself. USB1 is a little over a megabyte per second, which is enough to transmit many video bitrates.

- A device is only as good as its drivers.
Hear me now and believe me now, or believe me later in pain. Pay close attention to the feedback on this one. Some people will inevitably have problems with any device, but if you see a consistent pattern of people who are having similar problems, especially those without resolution, beware.

_______________________________________________


If memory serves me, Lexicon released the Omega (and perhaps even the Alpha) before the Lambda. I remember the Omega being released, and it was just overkill. And very expensive to me. Eventually, they made a middle-ground device perfect for single home users, flexible enough to do double-duty as a home entertainment audio center, as well as a very flexible recording device, suitable for on-location or home recording.


FRONT PANEL
Mic 1 / Mic 2 knobs (with Peak indicator [red LED]) with Stereo/Mono button "Monitor" switch (I think this affects headphones only).

Line 1 / Line 2 knobs (with Peak indicator [red LED]) with Stereo/Mono button "Monitor" switch (I think this affects headphones only).

Monitor Mix knob (Direct to Playback, continuously variable)

Output Level (strangely, this knob has much more resistance than all the other knobs--I prefer the feel of this knob).

On the bottom left, a single 1/4" Instrument level input is available on the front, for conveniently plugging your guitar in. Plugging an instrument in here smartly automatically switches over Line 1 to this input (you should also select "Mono" on the "Monitor" switch). I think this may be the only instrument-level input, which doesn't bug me, but may be an issue for people seeking to record a guitarist and bassist simultaneously on separate channels without the user of a mixer to get one of the signals up to line level.

On the bottom right, nicely a 1/8-inch headphone jack, not a 1/4". At least here they're not appealing to the living room recorder gear snobs.

At the bottom middle, there are 4 levels of LED's used to denote signal strength, excluding the "Peak" LED beside each input knob, which I guess would then make for a total of 5.



BACK PANEL
Your standard quarter-inch dual Line Ins, dual 1/4-inch Inserts, two XLR inputs called Mic 1 and Mic 2, and dual (L and R) 1/4" Line Out. The +48V Phantom Power switch is small (to avoid accidental depression, I guess) and located above the USB connector at the bottom-right.

There is also MIDI line in and line out. All-in-one external audio interfaces don't have good reputations for being good MIDI interfaces, especially while doing simultaneous audio recording. If I could leave one feature out, it would be this, because I think anyone serious about MIDI would probably buy a decidated, separate MIDI controller which would not get overwhelmed when the unit was working hard. That said, I can't remember any specific experiences of people having bad experiences with the MIDI on this thing while doing audio work. I know I've seen a lot of reports like that 'in general' with disparate interfaces, though, including my old Tascam US-122, for which I could never get the sequencer software to work anyway.

There are no RCA ins or outs on this unit anywhere. This will be a plus for some, a minus for others. RCA connectors seem to make the gear snobs think that units which bear them are geared for "amateurs", and therefore are supposedly of less quality, which I don't subscribe to, but Lexicon may be marketing to that mentality here. If you want to hook this baby up to your home stereo, you'll need a pair of 1/4-inch male to RCA female adapters (inexpensive). Still, I wish it had at least RCA outs. This is one of the bigger bummers for me on this unit, but if those are the kind of "bummers" I'm dealing with, I'm doing pretty good!

The unit's external is all plastic. Still, it is hefty, heavier than you'd think an audio interface would be. I'd like to open it up and see what's in there, which I might do, because there are 4 pretty nice big screws on the back panel (6 more screws on the bottom, also nicely of the same size). There are 4 rubber nubs on the bottom. The blue side plastic surprisingly pics up fingerprints readily.

You cannot mix mic and instrument or line signals while recording, contrary to what I've seen some say. They are not additive/cumulative, but the unit will default (I think to mic).



SOUND QUALITY
Playback is pretty much silent for how much output it provides. If I turn the volume all the way up on my Class A amplifier, there is self-noise, but there is so much output on the Lambda that I can't hear self-noise at any levels I'd ever listen at with actual music, but extremely with extremely quiet samples at very high volumes, I might hear a little hiss from it.

Compared with my SoundBlaster Live Value, subjectively, the Lambda seems to have slightly less bass. I can only explain this as probably being more accurate. In self-noise, the SB Live had a fair amount of self-noise idling, whereas the Lambda has it mostly in the theoretical range.

Recording
Now, for what you're here for:
Preamp Self-Noise & Noise Floor
Contrary to what is (still) written on the website and on most etailers' websites, the Lambda has 44dB gain, NOT 50dB. This was personally verified to me by not just Lexicon's tech support, but one of their engineers. The engineer said they would correct the erroneous literature, but, to date, they haven't, and it's been about six months since I asked, at the time of this writing.

Gain level affects the noise floor level. The higher the gain is set when you measure self-noise, the higher the noise floor is going to be at (naturally). So devices should always be measured at max gain, with the amount of gain reported. This is what should be done. However, what most manufacturers ACTUALLY do is to measure their noise floor at MINIMUM gain! And often, they don't even report this! Or they'll measure the noise floor at some level other than max gain, and not tell you what level that was. Of course, this makes some devices seem on paper that they are quieter than they really are (i.e. E-Mu 0404USB). Such shennanigans makes me more reluctant to buy from such a manufacturer. Refreshingly, Lexicon puts their EIN (Equivalent Input Noise) rating alongside the gain rate (I just wish they'd not make a 'mistake' on what that gain rating really is, as that 'just happens' to make the device seem quieter than it is.

I measure UNTERMINATED, UNWEIGHTED. You can take a recording software which charts amplitude, such as Cool Edit (or now called Adobe Audition, a very nice easy yet full-featured software by the way, and able to handle VST's with version 2.0), and just record with no signal and nothing attached, and look at where the software registers audio amplitude.

In my tests, the Lambda had a noise floor of -75 to -73dB using a live Monitor Record Levels feature, with phantom power on (which is only a skosh better with phantom power off), on both channels, at max gain, which, according to Lexicon, is +44dB. With minimum gain, the noise floor was -84dB one side, -90dB on the other. (I don't know why there was a difference, nor do I much care, as I do not plan to do any audio recording with the gain turned all the way down!) This was all at 24-bits at 48KHz. The quieter the signal, the lower the lower the number will be (we are using negative values here, so a higher integer in a negative value is a lower number).

Compare this to -70dB to -67dB the same night on my US-122 (with phantom power on; it's about 2 dB better with phantom power off) at max gain, which is only +38dB. So if you want to compare fairly the Lambda to the US-122 side-by-side, mathematically lower the Lambda's gain by 6 dB down to +38, to match the US-122, and you get to mathematically lower the noise floor of the Lambda accordingly by 6 dB, which gives you a range of -81dB to -79dB at +38dB gain for the Lambda, or a full 11dB quieter! And with more gain! And this is real-world!

Sure, I would really like to have the +51dB gain of the Omega (which is even quieter), but remember that the Omega is externally-powered. I'm sure that if it were physically possible to offer a clean 50 or 60 dB of gain on a USB-powered interface, it would've been done already. For reference, about the highest gain you'll see on any preamp is in the +60 range, usually on high-quality dedicated rackmounted preamps, and some mixers.

So the Lambda preamps are very quiet, quieter than my old Tascam US-122 (which I thought was already quiet, and was happy with), with still slightly more max gain (6dB). Again, I do my testing unterminated, unweighted. These numbers are a lot worse than given by the factory (which tests terminated and weighted), but that's true for all manufacturers. According to my research, the Lambda seems to have the best quietness and gain on preamps for all the bus-powered USB audio interfaces, at least in the sub-$500 non-boutique range. If you find something quieter which is USB bus-powered, it will probably be an XLR preamp only, with no capacity to act as a true full-featured audio interface--Sound Devices USBPre comes to mind, which can disappointingly only play back at 16 bits, and rudely truncates any higher bitlength signals (so you still need another device to hear all the audio). Or, any superior device will only have one XLR input, not two.

There ARE a few (not many, actually) bus-powerable firewire interfaces which offer better (quieter and higher gain) mic signal preamplification than the Lambda, which I would have strongly considered if I had a bus-powering laptop, or if I planned to only ever use the device on my desktop. The TC Electronics Konnekt8 would probably be the one I would look at most closely. It looks like an energy hog, though, reportedly getting warm or hot just idling (or at least the Konnekt24 did), so again maybe not the best choice for battery-operated recording even if you do have a compatible laptop. Firewire devices almost universally use more power, simply because there is more electricity available to use, for the engineers to design with, which they do. So the upside of USB's anemic power is that the USB-powered devices you get, are very efficient.



INCLUDED SOFTWARE
Comes with Cubase LE, which I hate, almost as much as Pro Tools. Talk about needlessly confusing. I consider Cubase LE (which probably stands for "Entry Level" transposed) to be almost "shareware". It's sold for almost nothing, but is is very (needlessly) complex, and I think used to come with no manual, but happily, now does. The Lexicon manual has its own a brief outline as to how to record a track in Cubase, which is very helpful to simply get people up and testing right away, without wading through a bunch of documentation. Having cheap software included I learned is actually a good thing, because then you're not spending money on software some company decided for you that you're going to use. I think of Digidesign's Mbox/Mbox2, where a substantial portion of the cost is for Pro Tools, and the device is made "for" Pro Tools, and is not a sure thing when dealing with other software... indeed, if you DO want to use anything other than Pro Tools, there's very little point in you buying any hardware from Digidesign. To top that off, your Mbox needs to be connected to your computer, like a security dongle, for the included Pro Tools software to even function. I know of people who have obtained cracked versions of Pro Tools, just to be able to use the software they already legitimately owned, without the device attached (for instance, bringing up a multitrack project on a laptop while traveling without the Mbox).

If I could've paid $5 less to not get Cubase LE included, I would've done it. The Cubase LE which comes with the Lambda is Version 1.0.7 Build 94, from March 2004(!). I was able to find an upgrade file to v1.10 from Feb 2006 at steinberg.net/969_1_.html, also with full manual & documentation if you want to see what you're getting into. However, looking at the Version History, the only substantive thing v1.10 adds is "Number of simultaneous recording/playback channels has been increased to 4 mono or stereo". I'm not even sure if this affects the Lambda. So if Lexicon could pay less to get v1.07, which is virtually the same, that was probably a good move (or maybe they were just too cheap to print new CD's?). The good news is that v1.10 is available, and works, if you want it.

The Lexicon Lambda includes Lexicon Pantheon real-time reverb VST's which should emulate much of the reverb Lexicon has been so famous for since the 80s. However, Pantheon only works in Cubase LE! This little ditty is buried in Lexicon's website, and is to be found nowhere in my manual, nor in any marketing literature:

"The Lexicon Pantheon VST software plug-in that is bundled with the Alpha was designed specifically for the Cubase LE software application. Pantheon is not available as a separate plug-in. This version of Pantheon is tied to the Cubase LE application and is not available for use in other software recording applications."

I installed Cubase on a secondary computer just for this review. The Cubase LE serial number sticker on my CD envelope was invalid! It had a typo in it! I noticed that a series of 6 digits on the sticker should only be 5, and by trial and error began re-entering the number, leaving out one digit; I eventually found the right code (eyeroll). I knew I hated Cubase and Steinberg. A process called "Windows Media Component", hung on install and had to be ended forcefully (I had removed WMP from my computer).

If you've already installed the driver off the internet, you can still run the installer off the CD and it will give you an option to install individual components. If you've already installed the driver from the internet, and installed Cubase manually via Setup_Cubase_LE.exe (don't use ~LE_J.exe, it's Japanese), and want to activate the Pantheon plugin, just run the installer (either from the internet, or off the CD) and go through the routine, and checkmark only Pantheon Plugin. It puts Pantheon.dll somewhere in the Cubase VST directory.

I must say again Lexicon's Cubase LE quick start guide is something of a minor godsend, and you definitely want to follow that first to get you up and recording almost immediately. I wish Lexicon did the whole manual. Maybe it would change my thinking on Cubase LE, and maybe I will soften on this "newer" version after all. By "newer", I mean the 2004 version. My previous version was from '01. There was no Cubase manual, no quick start guide, and I remember staring at the screen, playing around for 15 minutes, not even able to figure out how to simply freakin' record a short bit of silence, just to test the thing! That's a sign of badly-designed software. I'd probably have a similar experience with the "new" version, but the quick start guide gets you over the hump. From that point, you can start building on it.

Luckily, Pantheon was not a real factor in my purchase decision. But if it is in yours, make sure you're comfortable using Cubase LE as your one and only recording software! If Pantheon were not "locked" to Cubase LE, it would be a fairly impressive "value added" feature. But, being intentionally limited, it is essentially a throwaway feature, and not disclosing this clearly and upfront is the slimiest thing I've seen Lexicon do so far. I tried to install the Pantheon.dll into another program, and got the error, "Sorry, this host is not authorized to load the Lexicon Pantheon plugin!". I'd like to hear if anyone has been able to get the Pantheon VST working in another app. The LE version is limited, and you won't have some advanced features like directly converting to MP3 (or at least after a certain period, with the 1.10 upgrade), or directly burning to CD, which I would recommend doing externally anyway. Some people have created Cubase LE "Tutorials" online for free, owing to its universality combined with its difficulty of use.

Cubase, Cakewalk, Pro Tools, and others, I find too unintuitive and frustrating to learn, so how much they "can do" is immaterial to me if I have to do more reading of manuals than I did textbooks in college just to figure out what odd places they decided to put everything in. Cool Edit was so popular because it operated more as you'd expect, and now purchased by Adobe, is still doing well.

What I do like most about the Lexicon VST Reverb, from looking at the screen shots, is its simple interface. After messing around with audio equipment enough to earn me a career in computing, I have a rule now in that everything my audio world must be simple! The Lexicon VST interface is very non-intimidating, the Owner's Manual makes it even easier, and Lexicon provides a small manual just for the Pantheon plug-in. It's simple and quick, but I've heard is easy to get a wide variety of sounds from, and it's customizable. I like it. I just wish they'd allow it on other softwares, or at least be forthcoming about this limitation.

So, when I use the term "drama-free recording" to describe the Lambda, I mean this with the understanding that you're going to be using a software package of your own choosing, that you already know how to use, and Pantheon is expendable to you, OR you already know how to use, and like, Cubase LE. If you're new to this, and learning on Cubase LE, there very well may be some drama. I discovered this Pantheon limitation only after my purchase (today, actually). If I had my heart set on using Pantheon in another software, then yes, there would be some drama, and it would definitely lower my product rating.

UPDATE: I just installed Cubase Lame Edition on my primary computer too, and though the installation went smoother, it knocked out my other, previous recording software's ability to record from or pick up any source. That is lame.


DRIVER INSTALLATION
Unlike "software package", driver installation is very important to me. This is the 'real' software your audio device uses, not just every time you play/record audio, but every time your computer changes its power state.

With the Lambda installation, unlike other hardware, I recommend following the installation exactly as it leads you through. However, do not load off the CD, but download the newest version off the website (an exe installer). This is the only piece of software you really need to make the Lambda run. Pleasantly, the installer is only 7.2MB large! This is a GOOD sign. Small drivers are good.

Here are some notes I took during installation for the benefit of my reader. You may find this valuable if you're a techie:
- This device, not surprisingly, uses a Windows file called usbaudio.sys. This is included on all Windows installation, but if you have a less-than-legitimate version of windows of a "Stripped to the Bone" variety, you'd need to find and copy that file over. Disregard this is you have a legit version of Windows.
- The drivers created about 8 startup rundll registry entries (MSPCLOCK, etc). This is pretty normal, as far as I can tell.
- The drivers created no msconfig startup items, which is great.
- I also didn't notice any new processes running, but one could be running under svchost.exe as a dll that I didn't notice. Anyway, this is good too.
- After the installer had declared all was finished, Windows was still saying there was another device which needed to be installed, giving the choice of "automatically" or "from a specific location". I didn't write down what I did next, but I probably chose "Automatically", since I didn't know where the Lambda driver expanded to. I do remember not having any significant trouble, so just going with the default setting must have worked, unmemorably, which is good.



PROBLEMS / GRIPES
For starters, there is the annoying blue "USB" (power) LED which shines constantly when the computer is on, especially annoying when trying to watch a movie with the lights off. And no, you can't turn the unit "off". It comes on when it's plugged in, and goes off when power disappears (i.e. shutdown, standby, or hibernate). I covered it up with a piece of black tape. A little bit of the light still shines up into the Record Level LED's. The Record Level LED's, nor any other LED's, thankfully do not shine when the Lambda is operating outside of recording.

My Mic Gain knobs can be a little noisy when turned, which concerns me. I don't know if this is a function of being new. This didn't even happen on my old interface. The occasional scratchy sound when turning is fairly quiet when it happens, but still there, and no potentiometer should make noise when turned. I think these knobs are the worst part of the whole package, and the 'feel' of them validates their noisiness. They don't wobble (like my US-122), but still have a generic 'feel' with their resistance, but that is all forgivable if they just work perfectly, which they don't. When they're not moving, everything's fine.

Another annoyance is that the Lambda's driver makes that little gray "Speaker" icon in your Windows System Tray go away! I did find a way to make it come back, though, if there's another sound card already in there. Use the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog in your system tray to disconnect your Lambda in order to make the computer switch back to the other card as its current sound device. Go into Sound and Audio Devices of that device, first tab, and under Device Volume, re-check "Place volume icon in the taskbar". OK out of everything, and the icon will come back. Reconnect the Lambda, and it should remain (it did for me), and default to Lambda when it's plugged in. I don't know if the designers of the drivers intentionally wanted to remove access to that volume icon which I found so handy? I don't know, but I now have access to both SB Live and Lambda volumes through that icon, without going all the way into Sounds And Audio Devices in the Control Panel.

The included Lexicon Pantheon reverb VST works only in Cubase LE! This is covered in my section above, "Included Software".

Occasionally (maybe once every few hours?), the lowest-level Record Level LED on the right will flicker on and off for awhile, around a few minutes, even though there is no signal. I've put the thing to record mode during this time to see if there was really a signal being picked up, and there wasn't. So I hope that if it is a defect, it will only bug me from a visual distraction point of view, not on an audio quality level, which I think will be the case. I haven't contacted Lexicon technical support yet, but I should. I did, however, contact them before my purchase, and did receive a very good answer, which is how I got the specification info from one of their engineers. In fact, the engineer even tested a Lambda himself for me, to make sure he was telling me which of the 2 published EIN values were correct (his personal result from one he grabbed off the shelf was actually better than the 'correct' published figure).

It seems many newer (especially high-end) sound cards can't do lower sampling rates that old cards could do. 22.1KHz and even 11.05KHz are a very useful, efficient sampling rates for voice, for instance, and can save a lot of disk space on your laptop during long recordings, especially if you keep all your originals uncompressed. Low sample rates also lengthen battery life. The Lambda can only record at 44.1 and 48 Khz (16- and 24-bit; no 8-bit here, either, lol). If you want a low sample rate, you'll have to use software to convert it post-facto, so that's one extra step. Again, this isn't unique to the Lambda. Don't worry about playback of various samplerates; that's fine. By the way, the Lambda won't record at 96Khz sampling rate, and that doesn't bother me at all. I'd even choose a 22KHz recording feature over 96, as I'd use it more. Unlike 96, 22KHz wouldn't add substantial cost.

In my audio recording software, signals are usually equal variations of sine waves, which means that the chart of the sound wave has equal amplitude on one side of the wave than the other. When recording the Lambda's noise floor, though, I noticed that one side of the wave was a higher amplitude than the other, and I don't know how that is even possible, or if it is important. It did concern me a bit, though.



EXTRA INFO
- I'm happy to report no difficulties hibernating or going on standby (UNlike my Tascam).

- Lexicon's Lambda product info flyer PDF states that its preams are made by DBX. Ditto, apparently, for the Alpha and Omega. The Omega is known to use the "solid state portion" of the dbx 386 preamp, but it is currently not clear how the Lambda differs from that. Ironically, I suspect (but can't yet prove) that the (bus-powered) Alpha preamp matches the gain & quietness of the (externally powered) Omega, since with only one channel to deal with on the Alpha, Lexicon has more power available for it, vs the Lambda's two channels and more features. However, the Alpha has no phantom power, seriously compromising your choice of microphones.

- I have now (briefly) tried the Lambda in ASIO mode (in my test with Cubase LE), but not yet with ASIO4ALL, but the little I've heard about ASIO4ALL has been good, and would like to hear more feedback. The Lambda provides its own "Lambda ASIO" which must be manually activating in Cubase (Quick Start Guide leads you through this, thank goodness).

- Balanced/Unbalanced Ins and Outs! (1/4".) The Lambda automatically senses/switches between the two, too! Cool.

- The Lambda "plays nice" with my SB Live Value. No conflicts here. The SB Live is renowned for not playing nice with other cards (I think that's just because there are so many out there).

- It is stated 3 times in the manual to not plug a "line out" cable into the device's "line in" if the Phantom Power is on, "to avoid damage" (it doesn't say damage to what--I would assume your gear!). If you needed to read that, reading it probably won't stop you. Who would plug a line out cable into an input? I guess it's for liability reasons. So don't do it.

- Curiously, I didn't see any warning to turn off Phantom Power while connecting and disconnecting mics, so it appears safe (for the Lambda, anyway) to connect mics while Phantom Power is "hot". My Tascam US-122, I believe, which I disregarded/forgot without issue, but I read others who had damaged or ruined their US-122's by forgetting. It's nice to know I don't have to remember this, because I'd certainly forget!

- Also curiously, I didn't read anywhere in the manual that you absolutely needed to use Microsoft's "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray to disconnect the Lambda. I just re-scanned the manual for "Safely Remove", and found no results. It's nice to know I don't 'absolutely' have to remember to do this, as I'd surely forget! This device is not truly "hot-swappable". After you use "Safely Remove", the Lambda stays powered and fully functional. Every time you plug it back in, Windows reinstalls the driver, bringing up a number of dialog boxes which you just click "Automatically" through, but nevertheless can get annoying. NOT using the "Safely Remove" dialog, strangly, seems to result in fewer dialog boxes presenting themselves when you plug it back in. So originally, I used "Safely Remove"; now, I just yank it.

- Lexicon is based in Sandy, Utah, and it seems that's where their support is based, too, which is a good thing. Lexicon is now owned by Harman International.

- Around the end of 2006 or beginning of 2007, Lexicon lowered the price on the Lambda from $200 to $150 "street" (internet) price. That just makes it no contest with other similarly priced units. I would've bought it for $200, and almost did but was still doing research, then they lowered and I snapped it, and don't regret it.


Recommended: Yes