How to get surround sound on a MBP from 6 channel (L,R,C,SL,SR,LFE) WAVE files?

Hi,

I'm planning an art project about the gain of (scientific) knowledge of mankind. The audio contend of the multimedia installation is expected to be dynamic i.e. it changes from day to day, as we gain new knowledge every day. It is planned with virtual speakers being placed at different virtual positions and/or moving in a virtual room. The text to be spoken by virtual voices will be fetched from open access scientific web sites. The fetching of text, the conversion to sound files and the mixing to the final sound file to be played will be done via scripts running over night producing the audio content for the next day. To my understanding Logic Pro X is not suited for this purpose without human intervention. Currently I'm testing the different parts needed for such a project and trying to set-up the chain to the final mixed audio file. The shell commands 'say' and 'afconvert' enables me to get the text fetched from the web converted to .wav files. The only software running on a Mac which can be steered such that it can do the automatic mixing with changing content of the input file is http://amamp.sourceforge.net wich I have debugged, extended to surround and to which I've added a module wich allows the simulation of virtual 'people' acting in the virtual room. (some issues have to be solved, but this requires simply some coding)

SURROUND SOUND is needed such that the observers of the installation in a dark room will get the acoustic impression to be surrounded by people talking (science) and being in a room much bigger than it will be reality. As output from the program mentioned above I get a 6-channel (L,R,C,SL,SR,LFE) audio file in WAVE format.

Up to this points all steps of audio part are tested and I don't see any show-stopper here.

The remaining and yet not solved problems are:

1.) how to get this 6-channel .wav file being played as surround file (which program is capable to do such a job? how to interact with Audio MIDI?)

2.) how to connect the MBP to a surround system such that it is really surround and not simply stereo. (I need to connect something to the usb-port. What is recommended here?)

The audio part is an essential part of this art project. Only if I have a solution for the problems above it make sense to continue. (this can be a show-stopper)

I would be grateful for any hints, advise or solution for the problems raised above.

Karin