This way, every time Pro Tools sends a ping, our patch will respond, and Pro Tools will be content that it’s in touch with a control surface. Thus we need to make a little patch that responds appropriately, which is what the example on the left illustrates.

The DAW sends note 0 with velocity 0 on channel 1 and expects to receive note 0 with velocity 127 on channel 1 in response. However, to fool Pro Tools into thinking we actually have a MotorMix connected, we’ll need to respond to its active sensing ping messages.

So, first of all, in Max, we need to create a midiout object with the output port ‘from Max 1’ specified as an argument and create a midiin object with argument ‘to Max 1’. A simpler way to go is probably to emulate the MotorMix control surface, because that company readily provides the complete MIDI specification for the MotorMix. If you have an actual Mackie HUI in your possession, you could sniff its messages by sending its output directly into Max (see below), but that would be rather time-consuming. In order to design an interface in Max that will allow one to remotely control the mixer and transport in Pro Tools, my suggestion would be, in general, to choose a MIDI control surface one wants to emulate (such as MotorMix or Mackie) and then send/receive the proper MIDI messages –– either through a MIDI interface if the emulator is to be on a completely different computer, or via the virtual MIDI ports 'from Max 1' and 'to Max 1' if the emulator will be on the same computer as Pro Tools. But pro tools does not have MIDI learn for the mixer. I would like to create a virtual mixer with max and control Pro Tools 9.

Pro tools midi controller setup