"DAW-less" Setup: Master Clock?

[Zork]

Do I need one? I was trying today to Sync up a few of my devices: Arturia Keystep 37, Arturia Minibrute2, Arturia Drumbrute Impact. Keystep was a controller for Novation Peak, but I didn't try to tempo sync that one, too. However: Despite all three devices were Arturia products, they would not communicate the way I wanted.

I set them all up in the MIDI Control Center software to send and recieve the same clock formats. Still they would run in different resolutions. Also, I was just not able to start and stop the sequencers independently. Drumbrute would run as a slave regardless of the master playing or stopped. Minibrute could only be started in slave mode when the master was playing. Keystep 37 would run as a slave from Drumbrute as master but would not do anything with Minibrute as master. It was driving me nuts. How can this be so difficult? Also, I managed to set them up to start/stop depending on the clock and not in between steps ("1 step gate" instead of "1 step clock") but the Drumbrute would run in half the tempo of the other two in this settings.

So, is there some secret I haven't discovered yet or would I need some kind of master clock and sync them all up via midi? If so, would they start/stop locked to the clock or just generally run in the same tempo? Apparently the Keystep can pass MIDI data from MIDI in to MIDI out when set to MIDI thru in the MCC, so the Peak could recieve the same clock signal. Haven't tried this yet but I see problems given the hard time the Arturia machines are giving me on that issue…

[Zork]

Ooookay, I used my Microkorg as a Midi clock, so far it seems to work much better. Need to investigate more.

[Zork]

...and I need to find my midi splitter...