Hi everybody,
my name is Bassam, I'm a Master Student in IEM (GRAZ) and new here in this wonderful forum.

by the way, I think I'm doing well until now with self-learning in PD though your advices here but in fact I'm still beginner and I was always just a passive follower here

I'm preparing now a new Patch for my new Composition for ensemble and live electronics (min 9 Microphones for 9 instruments)
my question is:

Do I have to use an audio interface with more than 9 inputs or I'm able to use the soundflower patch to send the inputs trough 2 inputs

I feel like I'm not clear enough

I have an Audio Interface (Roland Firewire Fa 66) and I have main 2 inputs and an other 4 inputs but I don't like to use them, is it possible to use Multichannel mixer to get the signal from the instruments and to send them to my 2 main Channels on my audio interface, then to send this signal to the soundflower patch to separate them to 9 input Channels or I'm crazy to think in this way??

hope that any one can understand me and giving me some advices because I don't know how to tack 9 individual Instruments to send them to my patch and to control them

thanks friends for your advices

best, Bassam

Hi Bassam,
it depends. What do you have to do with the incoming audio signals?
Are you going to process each instrument in different way?
How do you use soundflower to turn 2ch into 9?
A multichannel soundcard is always the best option. (my opinion)
cheers

If you're suggesting that you want to send 9 simultaneous voices through 2 channels, and then separate them back into the original 9 voices, then yes, you are crazy.

Telephone networks / voip systems can merge and unmerge voices like that, but they need to be processed both on the sending and receiving ends. Your mixer will not do any such processing, so i would say it's impossible.