[Captain_Pants]

Ill take that one Shawn, since you are offline at the moment..

When will the Thru be used.

NEVER.

That is a generalization of the port, but these days, I dont see many Thrus getting used in home studio applications. You know what the thru is for? If not, here is a general and limited description:

The Midi Thru is used usually if you have more than 1 synth module connected in series. The upside of this is the daisy chaining. You can have 2 1-voice modules connected together and use Channel 1, Track 1 on one synth, and Channel 1 track 2 on another synth, and using the modules MIDI Channel preference, you can filter out Track 2 on the first synth, so that all Data being sent on track 2 will be sent to the second synth in the series... or whatever synth you have programmed to read track 2 data.

The things I dont like about daisy chaining is the MIDI thru is such a dirty function. If not set up and used correctly, you can have some really bad amalgamations of sound coming out of the synths. You could accidently have Trumpets coming out of one synth, and the same notes playing drums on another synth. The convention Midi assignments of drum tracks usually has -C2 note as a Kick, -D2 and -E3 as Snares, -E#2 as hihat, as so on... So, playing some trumpets on the A,C and C# chords will make some ugly drum effects...

In general, I think it is better, more efficent, and less latency to have a seperate channel for each synth if possible. Midi is by no means a fast language compared to todays firewire ports and USB2's...