I have a very complicated audio setup for a project. Here's what we have:

• 3 applications playing sound
• 2 applications recording sound
• 2 sound cards

I really don't really have the code to any of these applications. All I want to do is monitor and control the audio streams. Here are a few examples of operations I'd like to do while the applications are running:

• Mute one of the incoming audio streams.
• Have one of the incoming audio streams do a "solo" (be the only stream that can "talk").
• Get a graph (about 30 seconds worth) of the audio that each stream produced.
• Send one of the audio streams to soundcard #1, but all three audio streams to soundcard #2.

I would likely switch audio streams every 2 minutes or so with one of the operations listed above. A GUI would be preferred. I started looking at the sound systems in Linux and it gets extremely complex and I feel like there have been many new advances in the past few years. I see jack, pulseaudio, artsd, and several other packages. They all have some promise but where should I start? Is there something someone already built that can help?