AstroLab puts Arturia’s considerable collection of classic instruments into a single stage keyboard.
Ever since the earliest attempts to use DSPs to emulate analogue synthesis, people have dreamed of a keyboard that can host accurate emulations of the keyboard instruments that have underpinned popular music from the 1960s to the present day. A few manufacturers have even tried to build one, but it’s fair to say that none of their attempts was a commercial triumph. But perhaps that’s about to change because I have in front of me a pre‑release version of the AstroLab, which promises to make the sounds of Arturia’s software instruments available in a single, compact stage keyboard. So, is 2024 the year when we’ll be able to carry a grand piano, a Hammond B3, a Moog Modular, a Synclavier, a Fairlight and around 30 other instruments onto stage under one arm? Let’s find out.
Introducing The AstroLab
The 61‑key, velocity‑ and aftertouch‑sensitive AstroLab is clearly from the same company as instruments such as the KeyLab series, but it looks slicker and smarter, and I particularly like the ‘wraparound’ cheek design. Weighing in at 10kg, it isn’t heavy but, because it’s so compact, it feels reassuringly solid and robust. Unfortunately, one decision that was made to reduce its size was a bad one: the pitch‑bend and modulation wheels are placed behind the keyboard rather than to the left of it. To me this decision is incomprehensible because the AstroLab has been designed for the stage and, if you need to place it below another keyboard or shelf in your rig, you may be unable to reach the wheels. At the very least, your wrist could be uncomfortably bent backward as you attempt to use them.
A second surprise was the positioning of the control knobs — which we’ll discuss later — to the right of the top panel. Most players are right‑handed, so it would make more sense for these to be placed on the left so that they can be tweaked more easily while playing. Arturia’s own pre‑release video shows the presenter reaching uncomfortably over his playing hand to demonstrate the use of these. It looks awkward, and it can’t be conducive to a good performance.
The AstroLab measures 935 x 327 x 99mm and weighs in at 10kg.
Despite its piano‑shaped keys, the AstroLab has a semi‑weighted synth‑action keybed that Arturia claim is designed “to hit a sweet spot between pianists who expect some resistance and synth/organ players who want to be able to move fast”. This is a laudable target (even if it unintentionally insults pianists) especially in a keyboard that seeks to emulate such a wide range of instruments. But inevitably, a compromise risks pleasing no‑one, so I recommend that you test it for yourself. If a hammer‑action model later appears, the question will then be (as always) whether you want to risk organ swipes on a piano‑style keybed or attempt to play grand pianos on a synth‑style keybed.
A large encoder and its associated navigation buttons dominate the centre of the panel. Arturia have made a brave decision here, embedding the instrument’s 320‑pixel display in the centre of the encoder. I can’t see any advantages to this but, as long as there are no long‑term reliability issues, neither is it a problem; all is fine provided that you keep your hand out of the way while rotating the outer ring to change values or when pressing the screen down as the equivalent of an Enter button.
There are five ways that you can connect the AstroLab to the outside world. If you’re using Wi‑Fi, you have two options: you can connect it to an existing network, or you can create a one‑to‑one relationship with your computer by making the synth a Wi‑Fi hotspot. While you might choose a network for flexibility, I would recommend using hotspot mode if you’re going to connect the AstroLab to anything when performing; you never know what might happen with a public network. But bear in mind that the AstroLab doesn’t support MIDI over Wi‑Fi, so you’ll need to use a 5‑pin or USB cable if you want it to talk to other hardware or use it as a controller. The fifth method is to use Bluetooth. Once paired with your computer, tablet or phone, you can stream audio of up to 48kHz sample rate through the AstroLab, and the manual suggests that this is for “playing along [...] with songs that reside on your phone or computer”. It’s simple to set up and it works.
Sounds, Sounds, Sounds
AstroLab sounds are organised into four levels. The first is a sound (which, to avoid ambiguity, I’ll call a patch) created using one of Arturia’s instruments within their Analog Lab software. This can be a patch supplied by Arturia or, if you have the appropriate instruments, programmed yourself. Once saved, it can (with a few exceptions and caveats) be transferred to the AstroLab, stored, and then played whether the computer remains connected or not.
Either one or two patches comprise a Preset. A Preset with one Part is called a Single and a Preset with two Parts is called a Multi, which, given that this term has existed elsewhere for decades with a different meaning, is misleading; I wish that Arturia had called it a Duo or something equivalent. When two patches are used in a bi‑timbral Preset, they’re called Parts and can be arranged as either a split or layer with each having its own MIDI channel, octave, transposition, pan and volume settings. You can determine whether a Part responds to the wheels and pedals, and you should be able to choose whether aftertouch affects neither, one or both. But, for the moment, this isn’t possible. (It always affects both.) Happily, there are no limitations on which patches you can use to populate the Parts in a Multi. This isn’t trivial. If, in the past, you wanted to go on stage and play a Modular Moog with one hand and a Synclavier with the other, you tended to need a Modular Moog and a Synclavier!
Moving up to the next level, you can compile up to 128 Presets into a Song. You can then use buttons 0‑9 to select the first 10 of these, but you’re going to have to use the navigation system to access the rest, which means that the Song structure may not be ideally suited to your 25‑minute magnum opus. The top level is then the Playlist, which contains your chosen Songs. You can also create Playlists that contain Presets without using the Song layer but, while this adds flexibility, I must admit that I would have preferred Arturia to adopt one hierarchy and then stick with it.
In addition to allowing you to play and tweak Presets, the AstroLab offers four additional sets of facilities: a single‑track looper, an arpeggiator, chord and scale modes, plus four effects slots followed by a master EQ. The first of these is a MIDI recorder capable of replaying a performance once or in a continuous loop. It records velocity and aftertouch but, as yet, not the data generated by adjusting the knobs. The manual promises quantisation, swing and a fixed‑length record mode, but none of these were available in the review unit. Even once they’ve been added, there will be no overdubbing or editing functions. If you like what you’ve played, you’ll be able to transfer your recording to your DAW and then edit it but, having done so, the only way to use it will be via MIDI because you can’t return the results to the AstroLab. You can, however, store up to 127 unmolested recordings within the AstroLab itself.
The monophonic arpeggiator (which you can apply to Part 1, Part 2 or both) offers seven modes, a maximum five‑octave range, and hold. It lies after the looper in the sound generation chain, which means that you can arpeggiate recordings without chewing through the memory that storing all the generated notes would require.
Chord mode can also act upon Part 1, Part 2 or both. You can select a named chord from the menus or play a selection of notes while pressing the Chord button to memorise the chord that you want. Arturia’s pre‑release documentation refers to parameters for strum amount and humanising the dynamics of chords, but these don’t appear on the review unit, nor are they mentioned in the manual. Hopefully, they’ll appear in a later revision of the firmware because they would be useful. Related to Chord mode, Scale mode allows you to determine a root note and scale, following which everything that you play is constrained by this. Arturia claim that Scale mode makes it “effectively impossible to hit a wrong note”, but I find it deeply disturbing when a keyboard refuses to play the correct pitches on the black notes when you select a C Major scale, or outputs an F triad when you play an F# triad.
The first two of the effects slots, FX A and FX B, host assignable ‘insert’ effects selected from a list of 12 types. The third and fourth are dedicated master effects: delay and reverb. When a Preset comprises a single Part, FX A and FX B are placed in series and their output can be routed through the master effects and then the EQ. When the Preset has two Parts, you can allocate the insert effects before routing their outputs through the master effects and the EQ.
In principle, the looper, arpeggiator and any appropriate effects can be synchronised on a per‑Preset basis to an internal master clock or received MIDI Clock. However, there are currently some issues with this, and Arturia have confirmed that their team is working on these as part of the next update.
In Use
The philosophy of the AstroLab is that you don’t need to program your sounds in detail when using it — this has already been done for you. All you need to do is find the Presets you want, organise them in useful ways, and play. Nonetheless, you can modify a Preset in a limited fashion using the control knobs to adjust any parameters assigned to them when it was created. These knobs are split into two groups of four — Instrument and Effects. In the first, Brightness controls things such as the low‑pass filters on analogue synth emulations and the upper drawbars on organs, Timbre modifies other tonal qualities such as filter resonance, Time is generally directed toward contours, and Movement affects modulation. In a Multi, these knobs can affect just one Part or both, which means that you can (for example) add vibrato to one Part while leaving the other unaffected. A Shift mode also allows them to control each Part’s volume and the master EQ. The second group controls the effects processors. Its first two knobs affect the wet/dry mix of the insert effects, while the third and fourth control the levels sent to the delay and reverb respectively. These again offer Shift functions, this time controlling the intensity of the insert effects as well as the delay time and reverb decay/size. The manual says that the knobs should generate MIDI CCs when turned, while a product briefing document states that they should generate NRPNs, but my MIDI analyser showed that nothing was being transmitted. I checked with Arturia, who told me that the knobs will transmit standard CCs over MIDI, while a higher‑resolution protocol will be used to communicate with Analog Lab. Nevertheless, my findings were correct; none of this is implemented yet.
If you want to dive in further, the possibilities offered by the combination of Analog Lab, Arturia’s software instruments and the AstroLab are enormous, although Acid V, MiniFreak V, CP‑70V, Augmented Woodwinds, Augmented Brass and the latest Mini V4 and Wurli V3 are yet to be included. They’re due some time in the coming months. And despite what you might read elsewhere, Mellotron V is not supported. In its place there’s a subset of eight‑voice (no pun intended) Mellotron patches that have been created using a new sample library, and you’ll find these in a special Sampler instrument category.
It’s almost as if one has the opportunity to play the world’s largest keyboard rig. And how does it sound? Lovely!
Despite the omission of the latest Arturia goodies, I spent many happy hours creating patches in Analog Lab before saving them in the AstroLab’s memory and combining them in Presets in ways that crumbly old proggers enjoy; a Hammond to the left and a Minimoog to the right, a Solina layered with a Rhodes, a Modular bass patch to the left and a Mellotron to the right, a Prophet to the left and a Synclavier to the right... There are approximately 2000 such combinations available, so it’s almost as if one has the opportunity to play the world’s largest keyboard rig. And how does it sound? Lovely! I can forgive a great deal for the opportunity to have a single keyboard that sounds all but indistinguishable from my large, heavy, fragile and sometimes unreliable vintage keyboards. And that’s the key to the AstroLab. While you could use it as your stage piano or organ emulator, I envisage it sitting above a workstation or one of the more common stage keyboards where — barring some exotic requirements — it could add the sounds of almost anything else you might need. The AstroLab’s memory is a healthy 22.59GB, with 9.43GB used to store the factory Presets and their associated samples. If I’ve calculated this correctly, the remaining space is enough to hold around half a million additional patches if you don’t save any more samples!
There is, however, a caveat. Due to processing constraints, the convolution reverbs used within the Augmented series, Solina, B3, Farfisa, Stage‑73, Clavinet and Piano are discarded, and it appears that the monophonic instruments and others offering 48‑voice polyphony also lose their integrated reverbs. This means that you have to use Analog Lab’s effects to replace them, which might modify the sounds of some existing patches. I can’t claim that this caused me any grief but, if you’ve used the original software instruments on your album, you might want to check for differences when building your Playlists for the world tour.
Inevitably, there are other niggles. For example, you can’t copy a Playlist directly from Analog Lab to the AstroLab; for the moment, you have to use a USB memory stick, which rather breaks the philosophy of the marriage of the two products. More serious is the delay when selecting a Preset that uses extended samples. This can take several seconds and, while the AstroLab allows you to hold existing notes as a new Preset loads, you’ll need to take the lag into account when creating your Playlists. Another oddity was that the review model continually spewed out a stream of MIDI pitch‑bend messages. Waggling the wheel could make this stop for a while, but it restarted a few moments later. I encountered several more issues as I delved deeper, and discovered some further differences between the keyboard and its manual, but these all boiled down to the pre‑release firmware so I won’t belabour the point. However, you should be aware that the next revision isn’t due until after the product launch, so you may need to make allowances if you get your hands on an AstroLab immediately following its release.
Final Thoughts (For Now)
Ignoring the fact that this review was performed on an instrument hosting unfinished firmware, the AstroLab clearly has a great deal to commend it. So, would I change anything about it? Of course I would. Most obviously, it would benefit from being wider. A semi‑weighted 76‑note version would be much more useful (and playable) when using split Presets, and a hammer‑action 88‑note version will be wanted by players who intend to use it as a stage piano. Then there are the issues with the positions of the wheels and the performance knobs.
But it’s another item on my wish‑list that will be the hardest to satisfy. Please, please, please can I have a multitimbral version that offers 16 Parts and sufficient split points to take advantage of them? Even allowing for the inevitable increase in price, I might find that to be almost irresistible and I’m sure that I wouldn’t be the only person. I must admit that I’m very much looking forward to witnessing the evolution of the AstroLab.
Polyphony
This list shows the maximum polyphony of each instrument, although the use of complex patches can cause some instruments to drop below the quoted figures. Pigments and the Augmented instruments are especially hungry and, while Arturia claim that any factory Presets based upon the Augmented instruments will have a minimum polyphony of four, the company don’t quote a maximum for these.
I found two problems here. Firstly, as I expected, eight notes are woefully inadequate to play many of the DX7’s classic sounds. Secondly, some patches on the Matrix‑12, OP‑Xa and SQ‑80 can exhibit an incorrect response when the sustain pedal is held and you play beyond the maximum number of notes. Having not noticed this elsewhere, I dived in to determine the problem (it turned out that the contours were not retriggering from their starts) and tested a similar patch in SQ‑80 V. This was fine. I then tested it within Analog Lab and the problem reappeared. There’s something strange going on here, and this is something that Arturia need to investigate.
- ARP 2600 (16)
- B3 (48)
- Buchla Easel (1)
- Clavinet (48)
- CMI (16)
- CS‑80 (16)
- CZ (8)
- DX7 (8)
- Emulator (8)
- Farfisa (48)
- Jun‑6 (8)
- Jup‑8 (8)
- MS20 (1)
- Matrix‑12 (12)
- Mini (16)
- Modular (8)
- OP‑Xa (8)
- Piano (48)
- Prophet‑5 (16)
- Prophet‑VS (16)
- SEM (16)
- Solina (16)
- SQ‑80 (8)
- Stage‑73 (48)
- Synclavier (16)
- Synthi (1)
- Vocoder (8)
- Vox Continental (48)
- Wurli (48)
- Pigments (8)
- Augmented Piano*
- Augmented Strings*
- Augmented Voices*
The Rear Panel
Starting at the left of the rear panel, you’ll find conventional 5‑pin MIDI In and Out sockets but no Thru. Instead, a thru mode re‑transmits incoming MIDI (whether received via 5‑pin or USB) through the out socket, mixing it with whatever you generate on the keyboard itself. To the right of these lie four quarter‑inch analogue control inputs: programmable expression and sustain pedal inputs plus two auxiliaries. Next come stereo XLR/TRS mic/guitar/line audio inputs and their associated gain control. If you use XLR plugs, the signal passes through mic preamps. It would have been nice to be able to obtain a tad more gain from these, but I was still able to perform my ‘Mr Blue Sky’ impersonations with no problems. Alongside these you’ll find balanced, quarter‑inch audio outputs and a stereo headphone output which would, of course, be better placed at the front of the instrument.
There are two USB sockets: USB 2 Type‑A for connecting external storage devices, and USB 3 Type‑C for computer connection. The final socket is for the external 12V/3A power supply, and this offers a collar on to which a retainer screws. This is a much more robust connection than you get with most external PSUs, but I would still have preferred an internal power supply and an IEC socket, not least because, if you trip on the AstroLab’s power cable, you might find yourself snapping it or pulling the keyboard off its stand.
AstroLab Connect
If you choose to connect the AstroLab to an iOS or Android device, you can take advantage of a dedicated librarian called AstroLab Connect. This allows you to control aspects of the keyboard from a larger display and touchscreen. Just one word of warning if you’re using older Apple products — I couldn’t install AstroLab Connect on my iPad Air (which I still use at every gig for mixing 48 channels of audio for my foldback) because the software requires iOS 13 or later, and my hardware won’t upgrade beyond the final revision of iOS 12.
Pros
- It allows you to take a host of venerable synths and keyboards on stage without the cost, weight or hassle.
- Like the instruments on which it’s based, it can often sound remarkable.
- You can program myriad sounds for it using Analog Lab and Arturia’s software instruments.
- If you don’t want to program, Arturia’s Preset library now exceeds 10,000 sounds (although you will have to pay for many of these).
- The internal memory is large enough for any reasonable requirement.
Cons
- At the time of writing, it’s a work in progress.
- The wheels and knobs are in the wrong places.
- Some players will find its bi‑timbrality constraining.
- An external power supply.
Summary
The promise of the AstroLab is self‑evident. If you want to take classic keyboards on stage without the size, weight and hassle of the originals (let alone the cost) it has much to commend it, and it can produce many modern sounds too. As technology advances, this could prove to be the start of a very interesting product dynasty.
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$1599
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