A call to audio specialists.

[Hydroid]

I'm working to setup a pretty serious computer station for myself, but I need some help in the audio department. I have an idea of what I want to do but don't have much idea of what is out there to buy.

There will be 4 computers (3 towers and 1 laptop) and I want each to output to a sound mixer via XLR from a USB audio interface. In addition I need to be able to have 2 XLR mics and likely a couple of spare channels for future expansion. Now the tricky part comes. I want to be able to then have independant outputs going back to the audio interface for each computer in addition to a set of speakers and 2 sets of headphones. So that is 7 independently controllable outputs total. Essentially each computer will see this return input as a mic, but it could be composed of a combination of the 2 mics and audio output from any of the other computers. I also want to be able to have completely different things coming out of each set of headphones and the speakers.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated and if there is nobody here who can help but knows a forum I could ask on it would be greatly appreciated.

[Nighted]

What the heck are you setting up?

[Hydroid]

it's pretty much a complete media production station for live and post production as well as recording. Because this will be for working at home too I wanted to keep gaming and work separate so one of the rigs will be a purely gaming rig and 2 others will be for work (main work station and 2ndary rig that will handle recording of video and sound in addition to being used as a dedicated streaming machine and possibly file server). The laptop as you can guess will be for when I'm out and about and require a computer, but rather than let it go to waste I'll still be using it when at home probably for browsing the net, playing music and as a personal computer so that I have less risk of damaging the work rig which is the same reason I want to keep the gaming one isolated too. The added plus side to having a sound setup like this is that even if I have 4 computers on my desk I don't need a different set of headphones + speakers for each one. It's a pricey system and I haven't bought any of it yet, but it's something I'm working towards and the only components I haven't really figured out yet are the ones for the sound which is quite a large part of the system.

[Hydroid]

Thanks ripster. I'll sign up and post the question on there too.