Alsa soundcard for icecast, Linux Options

[AliceWonder]

Assuming I can come up with the mula, I'll be starting an Internet radio station in January (mula being the minimum $500/year that SoundExchange wants plus a used CD shopping spree)

Primary purpose is two or three times a week, stream songs by local indy bands. But if I have the servers set up anyway, I'll also try to monetize it other times of the week with other shows (IE I have a nice collection of Flamenco CDs)

For just playlists sound card doesn't matter, but it looks like the easiest way to do what I want (mix me on microphone with music) is to have ices2 grab from the sound cards DSP and then encode the stream from there.

I need a soundcard (PCI / PCI-E preferred, I don't trust USB for this) that works well with alsa at 44.1KHz sample rate (I'm guessing that's best because that's what all my flac is) - with native driver in the kernel - CentOS 6 which is 2.6.32 and alsa-lib 1.0.22

Any suggestions?

Would be *nice* if it had support for several audio in, it might be fun to try an on-air request line or if it takes off, live phone interviews with local band members. Maybe though that would be best done with a hardware mixer before the sound card ??

This post has been edited by AliceWonder: Aug 7 2012, 18:50

[yourlord]

I'm not sure the disdain for USB..

I recorded and mixed several of my old band's songs using a Lexicon Omega USB audio interface under Linux using Ardour..

http://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Omega-Studio...e/dp/B0007UQ570

Supports up to 4 channels at once.. We used it to record every track, including the drums using all 4 channels on that thing. Never had a glitch.. Audio quality was great (IMO).

I wouldn't hesitate to use that, or something like it, in a live internet radio setting.