hey all,
just got the astrolab this weekend and for the most part i am really enjoying it. that said i have run into a few bugs already. i understand this is a brand new device and i am sure arturia will keep improving the experience with firmware updates, but figured i’d start a thread here to list some of the issues i’ve experienced and get some feedback from others in the community.
Bugs:
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right out of the box there was some frustration getting the astrolab connect android app to properly sync with the device. probably attempted 3 or 4 times before i was able to successfully sync, even though the keyboard and the app were both clearly connected to my wifi. anyway, finally worked after connecting to the computer and updating the astrolab firmware, so maybe not technically a bug, but the remediation process could have been a bit smoother or maybe i could have updated the firmware directly from the astrolab itself which did have a working wifi connection. either way, a frustrating start to my experience with the keyboard.
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at some point during the first day of use, I realized certain presets were no longer producing audio. i initially thought it was a connection problem on my end, but most presets still worked, only a few (certain organs like the Jazz B3) would not make any sound at all. i followed troubleshooting steps and performed a reset of factory prefs which did in fact restore sound on these presets and thankfully did not lose the handful of likes and custom user presets i had already created, but no idea what caused this problem in the first place and whether it may happen again at some inconvenient time.
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sometime after this i also noticed that the list of “Types” in the preset browser was only showing a small subset of the full list. Maybe 4 or 5 instead of the usual longer list. Don’t know if this happened before or after the reset of factory prefs, but a restart of the keyboard restored the full list.
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had some issues getting a sustain pedal working. the korg damper pedal DS-1H would not work properly even after going into settings and updating the polarity. switched out for another brand of pedal and was able to get it working, but not sure why that pedal which works with several other keyboards i own would not work with the astrolab.
Feature Requests:
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as mentioned above, the troubleshooting steps i took did retain my user likes and custom presets, but i wasn’t positive that this would be the case. So i went looking for how to sync these presets from the astrolab to analog lab on the computer and it does not seem to be possible currently. I see how i can sync from analog lab to the keyboard, but not the other way around. I do remember reading something about connecting a USB drive to the back of the astrolab to backup settings, but seems like i should be able to sync to the computer i already have connected via USB.
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adding confusion to my sustain pedal issues, it seems that the arp hold function is tightly bound to the sustain on message from the pedal. stepping on the sustain pedal while playing an arp with hold activated will toggle the hold setting to off. requiring you to go back into the shift menu to reactivate hold. i am contrasting this with the behavior on my novation midi controller where latching the arp is not synonymous with holding down the sustain pedal. (stepping on sustain while a latched arp is playing simply lets each individual note played by the arp ring out until the pedal is released, arp remains latched). it would be nice if the relationship between the sustain pedal and the arp hold were clarified a bit, perhaps with some user options as to how it should behave.
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speaking of the arpeggiator, you should be able to adjust the gate.
That’s about all I can think of at the moment. Curious to hear if others have experienced these or other issues. Hopefully there are also some arturia developers in these forums who might be able to provide some useful feedback or at least be made aware of the issues to address in future updates.