I have used the MUX shield to read 16 analog pots, one every 16th cycle of the main loop (which also counts through the MUX output), previously I had used separate analog inputs, each also on a main loop based counter.
Only taking one reading per main loop cycle made a huge difference, and this ought to help it even more.
edit:
Ok i got home and tried it, My ISR which generates sound uses about 40% of the processing time, and I have a lot of stuff going on in my main loop and there i one analogread per loop(different pots through MUX)
test bit was cycling at:
460hz
changed 3 analogwrites to OCRxx and some digitalwrites to direct bitwrite to the ports., the speed improved to
480hz
then i did this tweak and the speed improved to
530hz
so even with all the other things happening in my loop
(quite a lot, including a lot of "map" and other multiplication and division) thats quite a nice improvement!
edit:
oh yes i do not notice any difference in the accuracy of the potentiometers as far as i can tell i cant hear any wavering of the controls when set the filter frequency or whatever.