Hi again - I’m pretty hooked on SurgeXT so far :) I haven’t messed around with MIDI for a few years - I usually just plonk around a bit on the Juno piano - (I was a guitarist in what feels like a past life these days). The free software synths have sure come a long way since Yoshimi! I’m finding SurgeXT kinda amazing because it’s just so much better than I was expecting from a software synth. I got hold of this little Nektar controller a couple of years back but I’ve never really done anything with it, so thanks again for the inspiration - it’s really great coupled with SurgeXT - I’m blown away by the sounds in SurgeXT - the presets are really cool and there are so many of them.

I actually appreciate the chance to mod because I just set up a Lemmy instance, so having a chance to mod on a reasonably large server is welcome experience.

So yeah, in summary, I think the Juno probably isn’t a great bet for MIDI, although to be fair, there’s no audio line on the Nektar, so of course it’s quiet - the Juno is quiet too if I turn down the volume or unplug the audio - not really a deal breaker for playing MIDI into a software synth but would be unusable trying to send MIDI from the PC to the Juno - of course it’s fine if I use the midisport for the USB connection and conventional MIDI cables to the MIDI ports on the Juno, but that’s not ideal. I was more surprised by the fact that the Nektar controller seemed to have less latency - I didn’t expect that - I thought MIDI signals would be sent about the same speed but it didn’t feel that way. Playing live MIDI to the PC on the Juno has a tiny bit of latency between key press and sound but I didn’t get that sensation on the Nektar at all.

Now that I’ve outed myself as a guitarist it should be abundantly obvious that I don’t know much about synths - but I sure do like playing with them. :)