this multiple open sounds rather silly (no offense). I
mean, if
I want to record from exactly input channel two, I'd have to open
channel 1 first, for no reason whatsoever.
On our mixing desk we can assign whatever channels we like to each of
the eight busses, so this isn't a problem. But failing that, you
could always re-patch...
Seriously though, ALSA is the way to go for multichannel. The only
reason we use OSS emulation is that Audacity doesn't support ALSA
natively yet, and Ardour isn't available to us mere end users.
Cheers!
Daniel