Hi Richard,

(...)
> The products from RME are a good place to start; they cover both cards
> and Firewire/USB, and beyond Windows and OS X they also have good Linux
> support. The cards use AES, MADI etc; and you will therefore need
> separate analog converters too; which is where much of the cost will lie.
>
> http://www.rme-audio.de
>
> Many soundcards support external clocking, so one option that ~might~ be
> cost-effective is to use mid-price devices that can be clocked
> together; but I can't think of examples offhand. For recording a mic
> array you will of course need to guarantee sample-accurate timing across
> all channels. So you can only use multiple "cheap" 8 channel cards if
> you can slave them together to an external clock.
>
> Noet that many devices advertised as, san 32channel cards, arrive at
> that figure by adding up all the different types of i/.eo - analog,
> ADAT, AES, etc. So the Firewire/USM devices from RME may offer up to 56
> channels, but perhaps only 10 analogue inputs.
>
> Basically, you will have to decide what i/o bus format to go for -
> ADAT(s), multiple AES/SPDIF, MADI, and so on.
>
>
> This is probably a good question to send to the sursound mailing list;
> it is well-subscribed by people involved, one way and another, with lots
> of audio channels.

many thanks for information - that is what I was looking for ! :-)
We think about our own multichannel audio interface (AKM AK5388 device
is a good candidate), but we want to build a prototype measurement
system first.

Best regards

Roman Rumian