Hello all,

I am assisting a professor right now with building a multi-speaker programmable "grid" where sound events can be triggered at certain locations on the grid and programmed in various configurations, controlled (hopefully) from Pd.  The model right now involves two large metal frames where speakers will be hung in different shapes and clusters.  We are looking to create a sort of "organism" structure that will allow the piece to react to itself based on parameters set up in Pd - microsound sort of self-sustaining structures and sound models are of great interest to us.

We're in the phase right now of gathering information about what we will need to build this - I'm assuming some kind of interface (sound card?) with multiple outs for each "cluster" of speakers on the grid, but is there another way we could do it and still make it fully programmable?  We have experience with electronics as well, so we could conceivably build an interface if anyone knows of available schematics or ideas.  Environment will be Linux, preferably.

I would really like to avoid purchasing a USB sound device as I hear that many of them don't do very well with Linux, but in the event that we do need to do this, can anyone recommend a good one supported under Linux?

Also, are there other artists doing similar things?  Any info at all is MUCH appreciated.  We are excited to be using Pd and other freedom software for this.

Thanks,