The soundcard itself is slightly longer than many at 175mm, but is absolutely crammed with quality components. Like the Lynx One, it uses surface-mount active components and precision resistors for optimum performance. Extensive use of ground planes and power-supply filtering also keeps computer-related noise to a minimum, and the digital input and output are both transformer-coupled to combat earth loops. The A-D converters are AKM AK5394s with a 123dB dynamic range, while on the output side the D-A converters are model CS4396 from Crystal Semiconductor, with a dynamic range of up to 120dB.
There are two two-pin connectors on the card labelled Clock In and Clock Out to link multiple Lynx Two cards in sample-accurate sync, although of course you could instead use the external clock cables to the same end. The drivers and mixer utility support up to four cards, with one as master and the remainder as slaves, although I wasn't able to test out this aspect myself. Each card also has a unique hardware serial number that is labelled on the rear. The User Guide claims that this will be displayed in the About page of the software mixer utility, but it didn't with mine. A further 14-pin keyed connector on the card is labelled LStream, and lets you connect one of the optional internal LStream Expansion Modules (see box).
The latest version 1.3 build 046 setup program and drivers for the Lynx Two support Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP, and provide MME, DirectSound, and ASIO 2.0 support. They comprise just four files with a total size of 542K, and Lynx therefore ship them on a single floppy disk. While the Lynx One has Mac drivers, these weren't yet available for the Lynx Two at the time of my review, but should be released within the first half of this year for Mac OS 9.
While visiting the Lynx web site I found a firmware update program for the card released just a few days before Christmas. This adds various new features such as support for 8kHz sample rate and Global SyncStart to ensure that multiple devices can be started with sample-accurate sync, so I downloaded this to update the review card before I got started. Windows NT and 2000 owners should install the card before running the Lynx Two setup program, although unusually, Lynx recommend that Windows 95/98/ME users do the opposite, and run their Setup.exe file before installing the hardware. This ensures that the various driver files are already in the Windows/System folder when Windows discovers the card, and I had no problems with this approach.
The Lynx Two appears to software applications as 16 inputs and outputs, which are unambiguously labelled as 'LynxTWO-A Play 1' through to 'LynxTWO-A Play 8', and 'LynxTWO-A Record 1' through to 'LynxTWO-A Record 8'. Additional cards will show up as 'B', 'C', and so on.