I’m getting hung notes on Astrolab when sending MIDI from a Roland Fantom, is anyone seeing anything similar? The hung notes continue after pulling the MIDI cable and resetting MIDI options to default, which was worrying but a preference reset in the Astrolab utility solves for that. Also, fyi, per Arturia, program change messages are not implemented (yet) on Astrolab.
Hoping firmware will eventually fix all of the above, I love this keyboard and the concept behind it.
I haven’t gotten any hung notes from the onboard keyboard, nor from any MIDI or USB controller I’ve connected to the AstroLab, but maybe the Fantom is sending extra MIDI data that are clogging the MIDI In.
If you have reported it to Arturia via the online support form, I’m sure it’s being looked into.
Program Change + Bank Select messages are being received by AstroLab using the PlayLists as follows:
So, if you want to select the 5th preset in the 2nd Song of the 1st Playlist:
MSB = 0, LSB = 1, Program Change = 4
I have the same problem with my Yamaha Motif and Yamaha Montage: Midi signals end allways with hang on notes, and no program change (PC) signals will be applied. On the other side there are no problems with midi notes sent with my simple keyboard Behringer VC340 . Also PC sent by Cubase are received well. It sounds strange, but I think, Astrolab has problems with midi signals coming from master keyboards.
Still no hanging notes here with a master controller keyboard, but I haven’t tried with a Yamaha workstation. As I mentioned above, my guess is that those Yamaha workstations are sending extra MIDI data that are clogging the MIDI In of the AstroLab, like Active Sensing, and maybe some SysEx messages?
As for the Program Change messages, if it’s working with PC messages sent by Cubase, then it means that the Yamaha keyboards are not sending the correct messages.
Are your Yamaha keyboards set to send Bank Select Messages?
At this time, the AstroLab needs to receive at least one Bank Select MSB message (to select a PlayList) in order to apply PC messages. Once one MSB Bank Select has been received, PC messages without Bank Select can recall up to 128 presets for the current Song in that PlayList.
Hi Sean
Thanks for your input. I tried to send PC from my Yamaha Workstations to Analog Lab, and this works perfectly. I have a dozen synthesizer and I never had problems with sending PC. This has to work, because on live stage I dont want to lose time to change the settings from one song to the other. Astrolab has difficult to receive this Midi signals from workstations. I guess, they have to implment something like a filter
Hi, will share what I have seen so far along with what Arturia support has revealed. The Astrolab currently does not retain MIDI channel settings. So if you tell it to receive MIDI on CH 16 the setting will not stick, ex; set the channel, exit, go back in and the MIDI channel will revert to the default “All.” This is not good for my WS (Fantom) as well since Fantom sends MIDI on all 16 channels by default unless you jump thru hoops. Arturia is aware of this and hinted that FW will eventually fix this problem. And it IS a problem, especially for a device positioned as a stage piano.
As far as program change, I have a note around here from Arturia on how PC is implemented, I think they are going to make the favorites their own bank, which would work great for me.
But AL is not really useful for me until MIDI is fixed, I perform w/o a computer and Fantom needs to be able to send MIDI reliably to any KB in the rig.
AstroLab does retain MIDI channel settings, but I agree there’s room for improvement.
The Keyboard Channel (in Settings / MIDI In/Out) is global, but the Part 1 and Part 2 channels are saved on a per-preset basis, i.e. you can assign different MIDI channels to Part1/Part2 for each preset. While this can be useful in some cases, it would be more practical to be able to override the Part channels for all presets in the Global MIDI In/Out Settings.
First off, Astrolab is just super great!
Do you know VST Live? Disclaimer: I am one of the programmers 
The combination with AL is a dream come true. it lacks just two tiny details:
a) global Midi input channel override. As you mentioned, it makes it very cumbersome to set this for each and every preset individually. Btw when receiving bank select/program change it does reset the global setting to “All”.
b) local off. the (fantastic!) keyboard should be detachable from the sound engine - or maybe I missed how to do it. A quick solution would be to support MIDI Local Off (cc#120).
Thanks for creating such a beautiful instrument!
I agree 100 percent. Please Arturia, the kindergarten MIDI implementation is not very characteristic of your company. It’s 2024, please update Astrolab MIDI to reflect that. I mean, its not even MIDI really. It says MIDI…but it does not work.
Follow us for the hottest sounds, fresh content, exclusive offers and Arturia news as it happens.