Midi
There are a lot of synthesizers in my studio and they are not all in a spot where I can easily play on them. But there is a way you can play on synthesizers remotely using a protocol called Midi. The note information is send over a wire by the synthesizer that you play on and received on another synthesizer that will play exactly the same notes. But you can also send other information over this protocol even to program the synthesizers to alter the sound. Since the synthesizers are all around my studio I build little Islands that all have at least one Midi interface in them. I use midi interface from the Motu brand. They all have 8 inputs and outputs and on all of them there is also a Roland A-880 connected on port 8 of the Motu. The Roland A-880 is a stand-a-lone midi Patch Bay. In this way I can even hook up more synthesizers to a single 8x8 midi interface.
But now-a-days more and more modern synthesizers come equipped with USB connections. And they then emulate midi over this USB connection. The advantage is that it saves Midi ports on my Midi interfaces, but the disadvantage in the same time is that it takes up more USB connectors on your PC and you need to install extra drivers for it. But then these midi ports also show up in your software with the name of the synthesizer they belong to and that again is a big advantage of course. Especially when you have a lot of them like I do. An annoying problem that I still have for example is that I have 5 motu 8x8 128 express interfaces hooked up to my audio PC and they are all called the same with a port number distinguishing them, but when I reboot my PC the order they are in change every time :(
When you want to see a list of all the midi equipment I use in my studio you can click on the 'list' item in the menu on the left. You can also read more about my midi setup in the 'background' section of this website.