Any Soundblaser Live! with the opensource drivers (from http://opensource.creative.com) supports 4 channel output through front and rear output on the card. Just get the cheapest you can find. They are basicly all the same. I think that the default mixer settings route the two dsp devices to front and rear (if not there is some text regarding setting up the routing - and a mailing list you can ask ;))
If you start PD with -outchannels 4 dac~ 1 is front L dac~ 2 is front R dac~ 3 is rear L dac~ 4 is rear R
HTH Soeren
My problem is to get four analog independent audio-stream channels: I plan to create a terrible quadro sample with csound, process it by pd and output the result to 4 loudspeakers. The last step (out of my Linux-box) is unclear to me: how can I transform the data to real 4 channel analog sound. Is it doable with two eg. SB cards ? There are roumors some PCI128 cards support 4 channel output ( has anybody got this working ) ?
Or do I have to spend $$$ on a RME-Hammerfall-AEB4-O combo.
Even in the last case which sounds most elegant I am not sure which drivers or pd settings are needed.