HUI clarification

[musicman691]

I see HUI control surfaces are in the 'not supported' specs section for PT 11. If indeed this passes what about all those who have HUI surfaces like a Mackie, Presonus Faderport, SSL AWS 900/924/948 - Matrix - Duality - Nucleus consoles and surfaces? Out of luck? Or a case of 'it may work, it may not'? I'd imagine there's a bunch of pro studios that have some type of HUI console, particularly the SSL pieces that are watching what Avid does and are not looking forward to scrapping what they have for an Icon or System 5 no matter the integration with PT.

In a recent podcast from Pro Tools Expert Russ and the guys talked about what Avid does to put things in certain areas of supported/not supported/not work. They mentioned something about Avid takes into account whether something would work across the entire Avid product line and not just ProTools - true or not? That would explain why some things seems out of place in the 'not supported' section.

[Bruce Paine]

3rd party control surfaces that use the HUI protocol are listed in the preliminary system requirements under this category:
Not Officially Supported (Untested)

Not under this category:
Not Compatible (Will Not Work)

What that means is that they are not part of the official qualification test grid for Avid engineering.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Bruce Paine

3rd party control surfaces that use the HUI protocol are listed in the preliminary system requirements under this category:
Not Officially Supported (Untested)

Not under this category:
Not Compatible (Will Not Work)

What that means is that they are not part of the official qualification test grid for Avid engineering.

I understand what the categories mean. But I guess the question really should be is Avid going to do anything to break HUI controllers from working with PT11 or is it going to be like they (Avid) have said where won't do anything to keep third party interfaces from working in PT11? Same situation with HUI?

Breaking HUI could put a lot of people out of sorts that aren't working with Icon or System 5 controllers.

[Dave Lang]

Best thing I guess is to wait and see. Probably not. But we can't expect Avid to test every peripheral out there, especially if it's something they don't sell.

[Bill Denton]

I'm not totally surprised to see HUI go, as it is such an old and limited protocol.

What does surprise me is thad Avid has not announced support for Mackie Control Universal (MCU), a more modern and robust protocol.

And most of the control surfaces that support HUI also support MCU.

I certainly hope Avid is not dropping third-party control surface support as it could well push a lot of the guys with the Dualitys and AWS consoles out of the Pro Tools camp...

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Dave Lang

Best thing I guess is to wait and see. Probably not. But we can't expect Avid to test every peripheral out there, especially if it's something they don't sell.

It's not so much a matter of testing every control surface out there but does PT11 have or will it ever have HUI and MCU program support (are there even hooks in the programming for HUI/MCU)? If it doesn't then I can see either what Bill Denton says about people jumping ship on PT or they'll just stay with PT10 and possibly use VEPro for their 64 bit needs.

[ChrisSimon]

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

I'm not totally surprised to see HUI go, as it is such an old and limited protocol.

What does surprise me is thad Avid has not announced support for Mackie Control Universal (MCU), a more modern and robust protocol.

And most of the control surfaces that support HUI also support MCU.

I certainly hope Avid is not dropping third-party control surface support as it could well push a lot of the guys with the Dualitys and AWS consoles out of the Pro Tools camp...

+1
...and Yamaha consoles like DM2000 etc also...;-))

[Audioartist]

Does every HUI surface really need to be tested?
Can it be that it is more like MIDI.. you don´t have to test every keyboard that is to be connected to protools.

Are certain MIDI keyboards or HUI controllers more buggy than others?

Maybe it´s just a standard set of commands that it is up to protools to handle.

My DM2000 works really great with PT except that PT sometimes crashes when I go to controlling aux sends from DM2000, I am thinking it is because HUI was developed when PT only had five sends.
Is this isolated to just Yamaha HUI or most HUI controllers?

[ChrisSimon]

Originally Posted by Audioartist

Does every HUI surface really need to be tested?
Can it be that it is more like MIDI.. you don´t have to test every keyboard that is to be connected to protools.

Are certain MIDI keyboards or HUI controllers more buggy than others?

Maybe it´s just a standard set of commands that it is up to protools to handle.

My DM2000 works really great with PT except that PT sometimes crashes when I go to controlling aux sends from DM2000, I am thinking it is because HUI was developed when PT only had five sends.
Is this isolated to just Yamaha HUI or most HUI controllers?

I think, if HUI itself will work, most of the controllers will do their work...
Hopefully AVID doesn't cancel HUI as Protocol...!!!!

[Hugh-H]

Hello,

Avid does not need to test every HUI controller out there, they just need to test that HUI works appropriately. And they have stated they aren't going to do that by putting it in the "unsupported" category.

HUI is an outdated, slow, somewhat pathetic protocol. And it's very widely used because it's the only protocol that third party controllers can use to access PT. MCU is several steps up in protocol efficiency although still limited, but PT does not support that. Eucon is supported by PT but Avid will not license Eucon to third party controllers, only to third party software developers. So there will be no Eucon controllers from other companies until Avid changes that.

Starting with PT11 you'll only be able to use Avid controllers if you want to use a supported setup. HUI may or may not work correctly.

Hugh