Multi-line output from laptop to several speakers

Question

I'd like to play many (currently up to eight, but possibly more in the future) distinct lines of audio from my laptop, and play each line from a separate speaker.

The audio source is a Java program I've written. I can produce a single stream of multi-channel audio (one channel per speaker), or produce several streams of single-channel audio (one channel per line), whichever works better.

My laptop is a Macbook with USB-C ports (and a few others, but hopefully USB-C is sufficient).

I obviously don't have eight USB-C ports on my laptop, so I'm guessing some kind of intermediate hardware will be necessary to allow my laptop to connect to my speakers.

What kind of equipment do I need to accomplish this?

Answer 1

That is pretty simple. You need an audio interface that has eight separate channels of output. Make sure it is not a 2 or 4 channel interface with multiple outputs for the same 2 or 4 channels (headphone outputs in addition to the monitor/line outputs), but actually 8 separate channels.

This is only if all eight channels of your audio are different. If they are all the same, you can use a signal multiplier.