Basically I need to record about 6 channels of audio simutaneously to a computer harddrive (automatically, with no user interaction once the system is set-up). Can this be done?
I know most sound card/onboard sound support port remapping. So effectively I have 6+ audio-in ports on a single motherboard, is there a way to get the software to record those 6 streams separately, independently?
If I am still not making myself clear, think of it as an audio surveillance system.
OS is not an issue, Linux/Windows are both possible platforms.
There are several ways of going about this. First of all you need a external sound card. M-Audio makes some nice ones. I think that Audacity can record multiple channels at once as long as they all come from the same card. Otherwise Audition can record from multiple cards at once.
If you get a audio ADC that goes from analog in to optical ADAT you can run a single fibre optic wire from the ADC to the computer. But ADCs normally are quite expensive. I’ve used the Octopre (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/OctoPre/) before and it’s a great piece of audio equipment. It’ll even do 96khz sampling
I’ve done a fair amount of audio production (helped with recording a CD once). So email/pm me if you need help. (tbaldridge at gmail dot com).