Cheap MIDI controller for Pro Tools Sends Level - HUI

Bome Products
1

Hi all. I’ve been playing with Bome MIDI Translator the past couple of days to see whether it can provide a solution for my small studio.

I want to be able to give a singer/instrumentalist a small set of MIDI faders / knobs to control their headphone mix. I don’t need a full blown headphone mixer system (Aviom, Hear Back) and thought this might be a cheaper solution.

I use Pro Tools and I believe the only way to manipulate the Sends Level in Pro Tools is using HUI? I’ve got a basic MIDI keyboard sending CC messages (0-127), translating them to HUI ‘delta’ changes and moving the Sends in Pro Tools. It’s doing nearly everything that I want it to do, which is great!

Keeping track of the Send Level in relation to the MIDI controller knob is not something I’ve looked at yet and it seems with a fixed knob (not infinite scroll) that that might be tricky.

Before I go down the route of looking at infinite scroll knobs and updating their LEDs with HUI out from Pro Tools I thought I’d see if anyone has any opinions / experience with this?! It would then inform on whether something like the Korg nanoKONTROL2 (fixed knobs/faders) or the BEHRINGER X-TOUCH MINI (infinite scroll knobs) might work better.

This is my current hacky attempt where vv is the value from the midi controller:

oo=ga-vv
if oo>=1 then Goto "positive"
qq=oo*-1
rr=qq+64
Goto "end"
Label "positive"
rr=oo
Label "end"
ga=vv

Sending out this RAW MIDI / HUI to control Ch1 Send B:

b0 0f 0b
b0 2f 46
b0 40 rr
b0 0f 0b
b0 2f 06

Thank you in advance for your thoughts!

2

Hi, the Korg NanoKontrol2 does not have LED ring feedback, so I believe your best bet would be to use the Behringer X-touch MINI. The V-POT rings control and output is also very similar to Mackie MCU and you can put your X-touch MINI in MCU mode.

The tricky part might be that if your user is on a given track there may be a sequence that would need to be followed to set it up for send levels for the user channel and then set it back when finished so that other track LED rings for V-POTS indicate the correct data. For instance, maybe on track 1 should be representing Pan while track 5 representing Send B values. You would need to put track 1 in PAN mode and track 5 in send b mode and somehow switch between them if you want V-Pot 1 to show pan values and V-POT 5 to show send B value.

Maybe Pro-tools has some sort of quick control to do this differently. I’m not sure. In either case, relative encoders with LED ring feedback value might be the best way to go.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz