Multi-channel audio devices may work in Audacity. It all comes down to driver support.
Audacity is only able to access one recording “device” at a time. As far as Audacity is concerned, if that “device” has 12 channels then Audacity will allow you to record all 12 channels onto separate tracks.
Unfortunately some multi-channel devices use multiple 2 channel drivers. When that is the case, Audacity sees multiple 2 channel “devices”, but it can only record from one of them at a time. Other multi-channel devices have a single multi-channel device driver. In this case Audacity sees a single device with multiple channels. In this case Audacity can record all of the available channels at the same time.
We don’t have much information about which devices support multiple channel recording in Audacity and which don’t. There is a little information in this topic: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/multi-channel-recording-in-audacity/15644/1
If you do try a multi-channel audio device with Audacity, please let us know how you get on.