[LAU] 8 channel mixer/equalizer implementation suggestions needed

Greetings, I need to make a headless rackmount mixer/router with some basic processing capabilities that will have eight line-level inputs and four outputs; it should be configurable (in real time) for routing one or more inputs to one or more outputs, with mixing and optional equalization of the sources (up to eight equalizers). The platform will use commodity PCI sound cards and due to the need to use available materials, will be based on an industrial form factor 2u rackmount ASUS Socket-7 PC with an AMD K6/300 CPU and 256 MB ram. Sample rates will be 44.1 or 48 kHz (stereo) 16bit max. At some point, it should be controllable using an arbitrary protocol over UDP, and of course should not require any sort of GUI. For development I am willing to live with remote shell execution, or in the extreme, an X-window on a controlling host. I am willing to drive all the sound cards from a single master xtal oscillator. What can ALSA/LADSPA and plugins with an absolute trivial LADSPA host together with 'jack' do for me in this regard? Will I need to combine the sound cards as a single virtual card and if so, will I have the flexibility to route and mix as described above? Latency should be less than 10ms or so through any channel route if possible. Should I instead consider running a 'jackd' per card? Will I be able to switch an equalizer into any 'graph' that I construct to permit shaping any input before mixing and output? As you can see, I am trying to build a device that I am sure could be purchased from someone like Roland, but 'on the cheap'. All replies appreciated. Michael in this regard? W