Anyone using a hardware synth?

I've been considering getting a DSI Mopho, Mopho Keyboard, or Tetra for a while and had a few questions to people using analog synths.

Correct me if I'm wrong but you can have a MIDI out going from your audio interface to your synth with audio outs going into your sound card so you have MIDI triggering the audio which you can record right? 

My question is if you have a MIDI keyboard controller going into your computer via USB which you use as your main controller and you setup your hardware synth to receive MIDI from your audio interface, does latency become an issue? I mean if you play on your keyboard the signal has to go from your keyboard to the computer to your interface back out to the synth which then makes the sound and feeds it back into the interfaces audio in. Are you able to play in real time? Is latency something I should worry about? Is there a better way to set things up then what I just described?

Thanks, your experiences are appreciated!

One possible correction to your description: an audio interface does not always have a midi interface (port) associated with it. In particular, looks like the Tascam US-2000 does not have it. So you will need to look for midi in and out ports. Possibly there would be a midi thru on your USB/midi controller?

Latency is more likely to happen when your computer is generating the audio, and even more so when your hardware midi synth is sending audio through your sound card into your computer and then back out through your sound card.

Your Tascam US-2000 has some means for 0-latency monitoring, which probably means its audio ins can be echoed at the outs without sending the audio all the way through the computer. The midi path you described should not be a problem.

Bill B.

Latency isn't a problem if you have an interface with zero-latency monitoring on its inputs or if you have a mixer with the synth routed directly to the output to your monitors.  

Otherwise I had issues with delays in synth playback and it was really distracting.  Another way to get around this is to shift midi notes until they actually trigger at the correct time but that gets pretty annoying. My suggestion is to try to go for one of the first two options when monitoring your hardware synths.  You may be able to use plugin delay compensation...but I don't really understand that so im not 100% sure how it works or if it works for this situation.

But either way it is worth it, as i find using a hardware synth not only sounds better (personal opinion of course), but with hands on control and instant visual feedback from knobs and sliders,  i find it to be more inspiring as well.

I use several hardware synths connected to three different MIDI interfaces giving me 4 ports within Sonar. Some have keyboards, the others are controlled by a Novation Remote. MIDI routing is a bit complicated, with one controller handling up to 4 synths, there's also a bit of MIDI daisy-chaining involved.
I sub-mix the synths into a UA-101 USB audio interface's line inputs, and "direct monitor" all my audio through the UA-101. I pass all MIDI through Sonar before being sent out to the relevant synth via the relevant port. I notice no latency whatsoever while playing anything.
 
Post recording, audio may need manually shifting a couple of milliseconds to line up with the MIDI notes, but that's it. If you've only one synth you can adjust Sonar to do a correction for you (it's in preferences somewhere), but if you've more than one synth and they respond at slightly different speeds to MIDI, manual tweaking is unavoidable. It's no big deal though.
 
One thing to watch is that if you use Sonar's ability to monitor tracks, then latency will be as much of a problem as with a soft-synth, maybe more so.
 
I've a desktop Mopho and a few others which have no built-in fx, which means either applying fx in Sonar and then monitoring the track (bringing resultant latency issues) or using hardware fx, at least up to the point the MIDI is recorded.
 
For my synths with no built-in fx, I usually use a cheap rack unit or stereo digital delay to approximate what I'm after until I've got the MIDI tracked and edited, at which point I usually disconnect the hardware fx, play the MIDI through the synth, record the audio dry then add fx in X1 as I feel the need. Or I'll track through the analogue stuff I've acquired over the years.
 
It's an old-fashioned, slower way of working than using softsynths as I'm generally only tracking one track/instrument at a time, and may make several passes of each track to record the MIDI, but personally I find I prefer working this way.
 
And hardware synths, even many cheap ones, have a "something" software synths don't quite seem to have - in my opinion anyway :-)