I’m planning a Daisy Seed pedal for drums/percussion with a tube front end and a plugin UI, and I’d love some design feedback. Concept:
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Mic in (combo XLR, no phantom) → mic pre → tube gain/saturation → Daisy codec in → DSP (comp/gate/EQ/reverb/etc.) → codec out → pedal out.
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6 unlabeled knobs + OLED; knobs change function per page, and a desktop plugin (over USB) exposes all parameters and presets (Freqtube‑style).
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USB is main control link, 5‑pin MIDI is a nice‑to‑have later.
Questions: 1) Analog front end: Any recommended way to interface a high‑voltage tube stage to the Daisy codec input (levels, protection, grounding) so it stays quiet and safe?
2) Layout: If you’ve mixed tubes and Daisy before, what PCB/layout tricks helped keep SMPS/B+ noise out of the audio and codec?
3) Control protocol: Are there examples of a simple, robust USB (or USB‑MIDI) parameter protocol for Daisy that a desktop plugin can talk to? Anything you’d base this on?
4) UI mapping: For those who’ve done multi‑page, 6‑knob + OLED UIs on Daisy, what worked best for keeping it intuitive on the hardware while still exposing lots of parameters?
5) Gotchas: Any “I wish I’d known this” lessons from tube + DSP pedal builds (thermal, power budget, ground loops, headroom) before I commit to a PCB? Thanks for any direction or links to similar projects.