I received my Astrolab today and was delighted to discover that my Keylab MK3 could connect and be powered through the Storage/midi port on the back of the device, furthermore, the knobs and sliders all worked immediately and were, more or less, correctly mapped. I was also very pleased to find that I could, after playing with some settings, set up a layered sound assigning one part to the Astrolab keyboard and another to the keylab. Amazing, this has dramatically optimised my stage setup.
With that said, it’s not perfect. If I change preset with the wheel, the mapping of one tone to my external device is lost, meaning I have to go back to the home screen, into the settings and change it back. Every time. Whilst I can save the preset as a new preset that retains the midi choices, an option to have my midi in/out settings be global would be incredibly useful.
Another gripe is that the pitch and modulation wheels can’t, as far as I can tell, be assigned strictly to one “part”, even by changing the keylab in the midi control software so that the respective wheels are on the same specific midi channel as the keybed.
What’s more, given that the keylab plays so beautifully with the Astrolab it would be great to lean into that;
Would it be possible for the controls on the keylab to better integrate with the Astrolab, perhaps giving independent control over browsing or selecting the sound specifically for “Part 2” from it’s own interface? The keylab is uniquely positioned to be a fantastic accessory to expand the functionality of the Astrolab, having a bespoke profile for interoperability would be an enormous boon to the product.
All in all, I’m mostly happy with how well the two devices play together, but there’s always room for improvement!
Cheers.