Dear Gearlovers,

So, I have recently aquired a 32 channel A&H GS3000 recording console for a project studio we're building. I'm using it in a hybrid setup with my DAW and it's been wonderful so far.

There's one thing I'm grappling with. Via midi, the transport buttons on the console can send basic MMC commands like play, stop, record - and this works without problems.

Now, the GS3000 has a "record enable" function, made for tape machines and early sequencers. When i hold Record and press the mute button of a track, a little light on the channel comes on to indicate that it has been armed. Via Midi Monitor, i've been able to establish that the console sends out a Sysex message:

(example for channel 1)

Channel 1 record enable:
Channel 1 record disable:
What I'm trying to figure out is, how can I transform the incoming sysex message to a control message of some sort which my DAW can interpret, in order to arm a track?

I'm on mac, and I'm using Logic Pro, but I'm still deciding on what DAW I'm going to use for tracking once this console is put into the studio (looking at reaper, mostly). My main concern is finding a way to get the DAW, any DAW, to see the sysex message in the first place.

I've taken a quick look at OSCulator, but on first glance it didn't seem to have what I need. Can anybody help me figure this out? It would be awesome to use this feature in my setup.

Thanks a lot!

- Gerben

Not sure if you're still looking for a solution on this as it's been a couple months but I'd look into Bome MIDI Translator for this purpose.

You would basically set up translators to detect these Sysex messages, and convert them to some arbitrary Midi CC of your choice, sending on a virtual MIDI port whether through something like Loopmidi or just Bome's built-in virtual ports. (I don't think Reaper will let you bind actions to sysex messages directly but I could be wrong.)

Then you would enable that virtual midi port in Reaper and bind the translated CC's to whatever equivalent actions you would like them to do in Reaper, i.e. "toggle track 1 record arm enable/disable" which it looks like that button on your console is doing (it looks like it's just sending the same message twice so it's a toggle).

You would have to make the individual binds for each button in Reaper, but those would be global settings so they'd work in any project from then on.