Thanks for reaching out, John. The INSTRUMENT 1 needs to be connected to a sound-generating device: iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, or USB synth/host. You can get sounds directly from the iOS app for INSTRUMENT 1. However, if you're wanting to play it connected to your computer, you'll need to use another music app since the INSTRUMENT 1 is primarily a MIDI controller. This article goes into a little more detail on how all of this works.
You are right in that you can use a Kenton host to control a hardware synthesizer to your INSTRUMENT 1. We recently made a video explaining how to do this with Orba that should be able to help.
https://youtu.be/tF9RIBNT8Kc?t=108
Let me know if you have any questions about this.
John Abrams
I see a lot of YouTube videos where people seem to be playing the instrument without being connected to a smart device. Mine won't work unless it's connected. Connecting it to a Kenton host seems to make it ready but there's no sound from the speakers. Am I missing something?