Arturia's AstroLab keyboards gain real sound design with 2.0 firmware update

Arturia has released a major firmware update that fundamentally changes how musicians interact with its AstroLab line of stage keyboards. Previously, these instruments functioned primarily as high-powered preset players—bundling the company's extensive AnalogLab collection of synth emulations, sampled pianos, and specialized plugins into a hardware format. The new 2.0 update introduces genuine sound design capabilities that let players create and modify sounds rather than simply browse and tweak existing ones.

Sound Design Gets Real#

The centerpiece of the update is a new Sound Edit menu that exposes the full parameter set of any instrument loaded on the keyboard. Creating custom patches now involves navigating through menus rather than turning physical knobs—a necessary tradeoff given the hardware's fixed interface. The most practical workflow involves setting up a custom category with initialized templates for each instrument type, importing a basic patch from the desktop AnalogLab software, and then refining it on the hardware itself.

Customization happens via the four macro knobs, with settings displayed four at a time on the screen. The process isn't lightning-fast for spontaneous tweaking during a performance, but it remains functional for deliberate sound design work.

New Acoustic Instruments#

The update adds 67 new patches across a collection of more realistic acoustic instruments—multisampled pianos, strings, and brass sections. This category had been a weakness relative to competing keyboards, so the expansion should meaningfully improve the AstroLab's versatility for players needing convincing orchestral sounds.

Quality-of-Life Refinements#

Arturia has also polished several smaller features: octave LEDs now reflect transposition, aftertouch response has been refined for greater expressiveness, and the connection protocol between keyboard and desktop software has been stabilized. The mobile AstroLab Connect app, however, reportedly remains inconsistent despite efforts to improve reliability.

The 2.0 update is available free to all AstroLab keyboard owners.