Arturia brings deeper sound-design controls to its AstroLab keyboards

Arturia has released a firmware update for its AstroLab series of stage keyboards that adds more substantial sound-design capabilities, moving the instruments beyond their original role as preset browsers.

The AstroLab line put Arturia's AnalogLab software suite, which bundles vintage synthesizer emulations, sampled pianos and original instrument plugins, into dedicated hardware that musicians could play without a computer. Previously, players could only lightly adjust those sounds using four macro controls or by applying onboard effects, without deeper access to the underlying synthesis engines.

The new update is intended to give musicians more direct control over how sounds are built and shaped on the keyboards themselves, rather than requiring them to return to a computer to edit patches before performing.

Arturia's AstroLab keyboards have been positioned as among the strongest options in the stage keyboard category, competing with other all-in-one performance instruments that combine multiple sound libraries into a single piece of hardware.