I just hacked XMMS (modified the wav driver to do up to 8 channels).... in anticipation of getting my new audiolase....
I experimented with Linux and a cheap usb audio adapter that just happens to have the same chip in it as recommended by [and presumably supplied by optionally by] audiolase... That way there will be no surprises... By looking at the previous channel assignments post it appears that audio is on the 7/8 channel... If I should have to output audio on the USB card...
I found mctools' interlx command [CDP Multi-Channel Toolkit by Richard Dobson] which, I think, would allow me to take a 6 channel laser_boy WAV file and merge two audio channels with it... playing it back via XMMS through Jack where I would make sure the laser routed to that new audiolase that I'm getting (hope it arrives soon) and only if necessary, via jack, divert the audio to the existing sound card.... The mctools runs great in Linux on wine too... I'll be able to merge laser_boy output with wav... (The main idea is to have perfect synchronization between audio and laser show.)
In doing all this I successfully got a new JNA (Java Native) application talking to JackAudio... as a matter of fact created 4 clients each with 2 in and out ports... with jack audio doing callbacks to 4 separate Java invocations... weird... Now that I hacked XMMS to handle more than 2 channels I probably didn't need to do that but.....
Either way I think I've got this worked out... Now awaiting the hardware... drool....
--/matt