PRO DSP1000P automation with Hydrogen PART 2

The original post can be found here, but to recap :

The goal : control a hardware FX unit with Hydrogen
Why : to be able to select a specific FX per song (or part of the song)
How : using Midi + minimal tools

After some googling and great help from the Linux Audio Developer mailing list (thanks Harry, Jeremy, Clemens, Frank, Olivier, Adrian) my FX unit now switches to a specific preset whenever i jump to the next/previous song in Hydrogen !

Simple guitar A/B switch

A couple of weeks ago my brother, my cousin and I attended the annual Muzikanten dag (musicians day) event in the AB in Brussels.  On that day you can participate in numerous music workshops, demo's, training sessions ... you name it.
I really enjoyed the day and my cousin got inspired by the 'wall of sound' workshop by the Belgian band The sore losers.  They had some really good tips on how to create your guitar sound, and one of the key elements in their setup was a simple A/B switch.  They use the A/B switch to switch between 2 amps.  This is a very simple -but clever- way to get a punchy solo sound : hit a button, second amp switches on > instant boost.
The trick is to set the second amp relatively 'clean' so you don't loose the 'punch' of your sound.

A couple of days later my cousin asked me if i could build such a switch, and this is the result :

Hydrogen 0.9.6 feature freeze

yep !  it's that time  :-)
see this post

Hydrogen GUI update

I'm currently working on some updates for the Hydrogen manual, and i also made some mock-ups of the Hydrogen GUI.  More specifically the pattern editor control buttons (the part just above the pattern editor)
Currently this is a mix of buttons, 'LCD' displays and dropdowns.  This inconsistency has been bugging me for some time now and i decided to have a go at it.
First priority : replace the different elements with simple, intuitive buttons. Simple.

The buttons are all bitmaps so it is quite time consuming to get a good looking 'icon' on them.

Below is a first attempt (top=new, bottom=current) :

It's far from perfect, but it's a start !

rugged laptop : part II

I upgraded my rugged laptop with a 3.5mm stereo jack > 2x 6mm mono jack sockets 'assembly'.

This makes is a lot easier to connect the laptop to the mixing console since i can now use regular guitar leads + the fragile 3.5mm jack is tucked away safely  :-)

I also added a power strip.  You can never have too many power outlets !

PRO DSP1000P automation with Hydrogen ?

Up until now we have always rehearsed and gigged without any FX applied to the vocals.  In fact we use almost no FX on any of our instruments either.  I guess that mainly has to do with the no-nonsense in-your-face type of pop/rock we play.
However, after or last gig my niece said we should add a bit more reverb to the vocals.
When i told her that we have no FX unit (not even built into the mixer) she looked at me as if i was some sort of alien  ;-)

I dont like people looking at me as if i'm an alien, so today we bought a second hand FX unit

KRK VXT6

Today i bought a pair of KRK VXT6 studio monitors  :-)

This is how it works : "take your favorite CD's with you, listen to the monitors, chose the one that sounds 'right' for you"

Some remarks if I may :