HUI control surface bug

[LesPaul2550]

I discovered a bug while using my X-Touch One in HUI PT mode. It prevents me from using my control surface on the last track (or more) of a project!

I had several tracks in a folder with no tracks after the folder. When I'd make two or more of the tracks in the folder inactive but visible, Pro Tools would subtract that from the total number of tracks I could control with HUI. So with two tracks inactive in the folder, I couldn't make my HUI controller control the last track in the folder (which was also the last in the project). I could use the X-Touch to scroll down to the last track (or keyboard shortcuts) but the on the X-Touch the fader would jump down to zero, the track name would be two hyphens and none of the other track controls would control the track (mute, solo, record). As soon as I scroll up to one track above, I had full control of that track.

Here's another weird thing... when I made two more tracks inactive but still visible, now my HUI controller can't control the bottom 3 tracks in my project. Again, when on any of the last 3, the X-Touch fader jumps down to zero and I loose all control of track buttons like mute, rec, solo buttons and pan.

Transport controls are normal as is the song position display and I can scroll through all tracks even using the up/down buttons on my surface. Just no fader, pan, rec, solo, mute on the selected track. Kinda hard to write automation with none of that working lol.

Now when I make the inactive tracks invisible, all is well with the world and I can move the fader, pan, rec, solo, mute for all tracks. So the HUI bug is when tracks are inactive but still visible. That's also what makes me think it's Pro Tools and not my control surface. I don't think the surface knows about visible or invisible, active or inactive tracks. It's just relaying what the DAW is telling it to display and control track per track AFAIK.

I thought it might just be PT 2022.4 so I rolled back to 2021.12 and had the same problem. So I switched back to 2022.4 because I'm a masochist. No issues of any sort with my X-Touch One in Reaper (after switching it to Reaper mode of course) so this is a Pro Tools-only issue.

One more note, I do use EUCON for the Pro Tools | Control app on my iPad as well as the X-Touch One in PT HUI mode but only the X-Touch was connected when having this issue (iPad was off).

Anyone else have or report this issue that I missed?

[albee1952]

Is it a "Pro Tools" issue, or a "Folder track" issue(which Reaper does not have)? Here are some things to consider:
1-HUI is actually a seriously limited protocol(not Avid's or Behringer's fault. Just the nature of the beast).
2-I have read on a few occasions that HUI and Eucon are not very happy about working together(one reason I dumped my X-Touch)
3-Have you tried running without using routing folders? If that makes things work correctly, I would consider going back to the old method of using AUX tracks(and routing thru them) as a decent solution. Other than the ability to quickly open and close the folders, there is not much real difference in function.
4-If you just can't give up on folder tracks, then I would save up to buy an S1, or maybe a used Artist Mix and/or Artist Control so you can avoid needing to use HUI.
5-Eucon is a current protocol that gets solid support and updates, while HUI is rather long in the tooth, and gets no support from Avid(and is not likely to in the future), since its actually a Mackie protocol

[deanrichard]

Slightly off-topic, but related: Initially the HUI protocol was very well integrated into PT. My understanding was that Mackie entered into a 20-year partnership with Digidesign / Avid to offer full support for integrating the unit. But the Mackie control protocol is a slightly different beast than the original HUI spec, eliminating the "sensing" bytes and a few other changes. (I had an original HUI for several years until recently.) As the Mackie agreement came closer to ending Avid seemed to provide less and less support for HUI. Someone might correct me, but I don't think the current Pro Tools supports the original HUI at all any more.

Originally Posted by albee1952

Is it a "Pro Tools" issue, or a "Folder track" issue(which Reaper does not have)? Here are some things to consider:
1-HUI is actually a seriously limited protocol(not Avid's or Behringer's fault. Just the nature of the beast).
2-I have read on a few occasions that HUI and Eucon are not very happy about working together(one reason I dumped my X-Touch)
3-Have you tried running without using routing folders? If that makes things work correctly, I would consider going back to the old method of using AUX tracks(and routing thru them) as a decent solution. Other than the ability to quickly open and close the folders, there is not much real difference in function.
4-If you just can't give up on folder tracks, then I would save up to buy an S1, or maybe a used Artist Mix and/or Artist Control so you can avoid needing to use HUI.
5-Eucon is a current protocol that gets solid support and updates, while HUI is rather long in the tooth, and gets no support from Avid(and is not likely to in the future), since its actually a Mackie protocol

[BScout]

Originally Posted by deanrichard

Someone might correct me, but I don't think the current Pro Tools supports the original HUI at all any more.

Pro Tools supports 100% of HUI. What it doesn't support is the expanded set of functions that came later with MCU. MCU devices have to run in the limited HUI subset mode.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by LesPaul2550

One more note, I do use EUCON for the Pro Tools | Control app on my iPad as well as the X-Touch One in PT HUI mode but only the X-Touch was connected when having this issue (iPad was off).

I can't speak to a lot of this (all my HUI stuff was put in storage a while back) but if you want to test if Eucontrol is causing the interference, your iPad being off is not enough. Whether your iPad is on or off, as long as Eucon is enabled in Pro Tools, it thinks there's a Eucontrol device.
So if you want to test this, you need to turn off Eucon in Peripherals.

[DetroitT]

Metering on HUI device tune off. (When Eucon is on)
All other behavior seems intact.
(SSL Nucleus-HUI)
Still Runs Nicely PT’sU 22.4
Mac Studio and Mac Pro intel
(Via Nerds ipMIDI)
https://www.nerds.de/en/ipmidi_osx.html