playing multiple large files in sync - alternatives?

Hi all,

I have been asked to build some software that plays back a piece of music that has been split into 24 mono wav files (each 96kHz, 24bit). Obviously the tracks have to play in sync.

My first thought was that max would be perfect for this so I knocked up a patch that uses a [phasor~] to drive 24 [play~] objects. This works fine for audio that is relatively short but when I try and do the same with an hour long piece I run into memory issues.

So, some more research pointed me to [sfplay~]. I tried combining the tracks into one multi-channel wav (I also tried aiff) file and playing that back but [sfplay~] doesn't seem to work nicely (it worked fine with a 4 channel file though).

I am using max 5.1.9 at the moment so am wondering whether any advances on this were made in the subsequent versions or whether I should start looking at another alternative (currently thinking about FMOD) or whether max 5.1.9 will be fine for this but I am doing something wrong?

Thanks!