Arturia has released a major firmware update for the Astrolab series, bringing deeper sound editing, fresh sounds and several performance enhancements to this popular stage keyboard.
Released in 2024, AstroLab is a 61-key keyboard that its maker armed with an extensive library of sounds from Arturia’s Analog Lab software, drawing on presets from both the Pigments synth and the company's V Collection, a comprehensive collection of hardware synth emulations. That release was followed up by 88-key and 37-key models in 2025.
In our 2024 review, we described AstroLab as a “simple concept that’s executed well”, praising its ease-of-use, speed and versatility while noting that its sound design capabilities were limited.
While each preset could be edited using a restricted set of macro controls, deeper adjustments could only be made by editing or designing presets using Arturia’s desktop software or plugins and then transferring these to AstroLab.
With the release of AstroLab 2.0, Arturia has addressed that shortcoming directly, giving users more ways to tweak their sounds from the hardware itself and pushing AstroLab into the grey area between stage keyboard and synthesizer.
Displayed via the instrument’s central Navigation Wheel, AstroLab 2.0’s new Sound Edit panel displays up to five pages of parameters for each preset that allow for detailed sound-shaping, each page containing four parameters mapped to AstroLab’s macro knobs.
While editable parameters vary from one instrument to another, Sound Edit offers players control over the filter, envelopes and portamento for synth presets, along with more instrument-specific parameters for sample-based acoustic presets. Sound Edit is not available for every single AstroLab preset, but Arturia says the majority will have it.
Alongside the Sound Edit feature, AstroLab 2.0 brings 67 new factory presets, focusing on sampled instruments and spanning expressive strings and brass, acoustic and electric keys, organ, guitar and layered performance sounds. (Check out the playthrough video below to hear a demo.)
Additionally, AstroLab’s sampler polyphony has been expanded and a number of minor improvements have been made to preset browsing, the update process and linking up with Analog Lab. Aftertouch has been enhanced on AstroLab 37, and transposition is now visually displayed on the keyboard’s octave LEDs.
Head over to Arturia's website to find out more.
