First, be very careful when using your home stereo, you can blow the speakers very easily. You can get a fairly decent 12 channel rackmount line mixer for a couple of hundred dollars and it should last quite a while, but even the best line mixers will have quite a bit of noise. If you can swing $500+, check out Behringer, great mixers for a reasonable price and you come out with balanced ins and outs on 26 or more chanels. You will still need powered monitors or an amp and monitors. You might as well get used to the fact that even the cheap equipment is costly once you satrt putting everything together.