[LAU] Mulitple sound caards with Jackd

[Jonathan E. Brickman]

 I was reading here:

http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org/jack.html

and became intrigued.  A few questions.  I would love to be able to run
with (say) three ordinary USB2 audio-in ports plus my AudioTrak Prodigy
HD2. 

1.  Can different jackd instances, connect and talk to each other?  If I
run four instances of Jackd and qjackctl under four different names, can
I connect them all?

2.  In the example at the web page linked above, an "ALSA multi" device
is shown, combining multiple devices into one ALSA virtual device.  If
memory and CPU is not an issue, will doing this with one Jackd instance
work better than four interconnected Jackd instances?  It seems to me
that this would require a "lowest common denominator" approach to
latency-related settings, and combining PCI and USB strikes me as
possibly troublesome because of the very different needs involved.

J.E.B.