Kenton MIDI Thru 12

I now have three of these, one per rack bay in my studio, splitting up the outputs of my DAW for distribution to all the old synths dotted around the place. It's probably one of the least sexy boxes you can buy, and once it's installed you may never need to look at it again; but that's the point, really. It just gets on with doing what it's supposed to do, while being built like something designed to survive a bomb blast. The powered buffering of the signal means you can rest easy about data getting dropped along the way, and the steel construction means you can stand on it by accident without worrying. Wrangling cables is one of the least creativity-condusive activities in the studio, so anything you can rely on to be properly set-and-forget wins my vote. Buy with confidence, even though it is a bit pricey :-)

I have a large number of synths that I wanted to sequence with my Octatrack. Initially, I was used the thru port on the synths I had but that led to a few issues as every synth had to be turned on in order to feed midi through the chain. I bought this and now I can send midi to all my synths without having to turn them all on. The timing seems to be spot on too. I would recommend getting the Thru 12 or even Thru 25, it will allow you to expand your setup whilst having plenty of midi ports available. This is an essential purchase if you have a large number of synths and want to control them all from one sequencer.

All I can say is that coloured midi cables are the solution if you're dealing with many hardware synths in your studio. I use white midi cables to connect my synths to the midi output of my Synthstrom Deluge sequencer (a very versatile sampler/sequencer in one dedicated device) via a Kenton THRU-12. I use the other available colours of the sssnake midi cables for sending the midi outputs of my hardware synths via a Kenton MERGE-8/4 combo to the midi in of the hardware Deluge sequencer. Each synth has its own midi cable colour. Same colours for synths when one is to the left andcthe other is to the right of the Kenton MERGE-8/4 combo.

One drawback is that the merger mixes midi clocks. I have two Korg Prologues that keep sending midi clock messages. I solved that problem by using an Arduino Uno with a Midi Shield running a Midi Clock messages suppressor coded with the help of ChatGPT. Very simple code.