Arturia AstroLab keyboard updates: more instruments, more presets

Arturia has quietly updated the AstroLab keyboard, their surprisingly economical stage piano that runs the V Collection. There are new presets, new artist tributes, and most importantly, some of the instruments you may have been missing.

Now in AstroLab 1.3: ACID V, Augmented BRASS, Augmented WOODWINDS, Mini V4, MiniFreak V and Wurli V3. We didn’t really run into any issues in our test, but it’s also encouraging to see these additions:

• Improved Polyphony management on Pigments and Augmented Instruments
• Reinforced stability of Piano V audio engine

Squeezing in a “stage-ready” collection of 200 new presets and 90 “artist tributes” brings the internal sound library to some 1600 – and you can customize more on your own, of course.

AstroLab update

V1.29 brought important updates, too:

New features:

• We can now save presets from AstroLab to Analog Lab
• Added Panic button (long press Play + Rec)
• Tick sound setting for the Navigation wheel
• Added FAQ link in the update pop up
• Initialize all Settings available on Analog Lab

Improvements:

• Improved Navigation wheel sensitivity to avoid misclicks
• Tooltips now displayed when turning FX On/Off
• Tooltips for FX are the same than on Analog Lab
• Chord mode works perfectly when playing legato
• Added warning Pop up on WIFI if password is too small
• Improved part creation and edition
• Improved animation when scrolling in Playlists
• Audio from external bluetooth can be controlled with the Master volume knob
• Link with Analog Lab is much faster
• Aftertouch curves have been refined
• Removed latency on Master volume
• Improved Bluetooth audio latency

Bugfixes:

• No more crash when transferring presets from Analog Lab
• External MIDI synchronization is more stable
• CZ V now sounds correct on first note press
• Bluetooth audio is no longer detuned
• Macros are now updated when going out of Playlists
• Big Playlists no longer create visual lag when browsing
• No more issues when saving inside a Playlist
• Preset is now correctly loaded when pressing the playlist button
• Various UX fixes (Adding more popups and tooltips and UI corner cases)
• User samples are now correctly sent when transferring custom presets

Read our detailed review:

Review: Arturia AstroLab, the stage keyboard with Arturia instruments

I’m curious what folks using this long-term think. Do tell us in comments – and if you have other questions or features you’d like us to test.