Just seen this
Nah, those round displays are easily sourced now. I even have an ST development kit that uses one.
I used to perform live and to be honest, what they are offering is actually a good solution.
For an actual traditional style musician whose whole thing isn’t to stand there and twist knobs in front of an audience, this is a good move. You still have assignable knobs you can twist. You can still hook it up to Analog Lab for in-depth design. Most folks have laptops now.
The preset management system via device or computer is far better what they can squeeze in that space for a reasonable price point. Just stick them on a stand in front of you and you have your big BYO touch screen.
With Arturia’s devices you can generally customise the control messages of their controllers and use them to send signals to external synths as well. Either via MIDI or CV.
It actually seems to be well though out with the emphasis in live use immediacy and connectivity. It sits in the middle between flexibility and low price point.
My biggest problem is the control should be on the left, because most people are right handed and leads are often played with the right. So putting it on the left side will stop constantly reaching over the keyboard for live control tweaking.
They actually hit the mark pretty dead on, it just isn’t for the “knob twisting” crowd. I don’t mean that disparagingly either. They have lots of other solutions out there, meanwhile Arturia is covering what seems to be big void in the marketplace. Roland, Korg, Yamaha… no one seems to have addressed it to my knowledge.
3 Likes
@simon.a.billington If I still played live, without a doubt this would be a “want, want, want” from me, even though I see many things that in my opinion could be improved/are a bad decision.
Like you say, everything should be on the left of centre not the right.
Polyphonic aftertouch would be really really nice, it’s in Native Instruments S mk3 series and it’s in the original CS80
I really really really don’t like the small circular screen, when I played live (many moons ago), especially those places with proper stage lighting (the bulbs they used in the 80s, one second I could feel cold, then a light shone on me and I was instantly warm), any screen would be hard to read, hence a big square/rectangle one would be my preferred choice.
As for knob twisting, I played many songs where once the patch was selected, nothing was touched for the entire song, but then there were those other songs, not many, but a few, well a one year old could play the notes (or in some cases note), where basically my entire playing was twiddling knobs.
But for the most part, it isn’t that 8 knobs programmed to what I want, wouldn’t be enough when playing live, it’s more they wouldn’t be enough in rehearsal.
Getting together with the rest of the band, I wouldn’t really want to take my computer along (in my case I use desktop computer that’s in quite a large case), so this new AstroLab, it having everything on board sounds like an excellent idea.
But for me, the way I used to rehearse is to get together with the rest of the band, have a jam and see what comes up. Sure I practised at home and might find a sound I thought might go better, but on the whole, it was at rehearsal where I chose and tweaked a sound and got approval (most times, not all) from the rest of the band. It’s at rehearsal, not in my home studio (which is a space at the back of the living room) where I tweaked the sound to fit the song, that option is why I wish there were more faders etc, not for being on stage, but rehearsing with the rest of the band
Then again, am I just being nostalgic and looking through rose tinted glasses, sure I loved tweaking my brand new Juno 106 at band practice but what about my SQ80, not many things to tweak while playing, then I got a D50 and while I bought a very very slow D50 editor for my Atari ST, at rehearsal it was just me and my D50.
So from that, it could be argued that this new stage keyboard is more capable of both editing sounds at rehearsals and manipulating sounds while playing live, than a lot of the synths I originally owned were. And that would be true.
But, for me anyway, my biggest complaint about the D50 was its lack of simple editing.
I dreamed of owning certain synths such as Jupiter 8. CS80, ARP etc and now thanks to Arturia I do own them, but for me personally, if I was using say the CS80 at rehearsal, I would want far more than 8 knobs assigned to it.
1 Like
Not a fan on the small circular display either, but if it saves an extra couple hundred of dollars over installing touch screen I can be more accomodating. I mean, why pay extra for a touch screen when we can just BYO and use an iPad or another device we’ve already paid for.
I’m a bit disappointed they added the Expressive Touché like Polybrute controller. That could have been potentially good enough to have just on the less, meanwhile giving people more MPE control.
This is also their first version. Somethings are likely to improve on subsequent revisions as they have with their other controllers.
If a large touch screen did add a couple of hundred to the price then sure, I am in total agreement. But these screens cost next to nothing from China, even Amazon (link below) has a 7” for £28.75 and that’s for me buying one, not a business buying in bulk directly from China.
Obviously there’s other costs involved, but I can’t see those costs being any more expensive than the circular design
1 Like
I was hazarding a guess.
Remember also, for the road that durability is extremely important. Then you also need added components to be able to drive a bigger display. Whatever is driving their central would be smaller and simpler by comparison than what you would need for a a 1024x600 monitor with touch capabilities or whatever size they’d decide to go with.
So I do think it would still ultimately add to the price, just perhaps not as much as my initial thoughts.
Yeah the whole thing is weird to me how they’ve gone about it. Seems to me it would actually have been cheaper for them to build a controller with just a small PC inside with Windows IOT, mated to an iPad-sized touchscreen and running a slightly modded version of Analog Lab. That’s the job basically done. Someone surely round the table suggested that idea.
1 Like
Nah it’s really not that complicated. Scroll up to my post from April 10th where I posted a picture of my Technics KN7000 from 25 years ago. Also Yamaha, Korg, Roland and others all had ‘gigging’ keyboards/workstations with big, information-rich displays. Often they also had hard drives in them which had to withstand the hardship of being lugged about roughly without failing. If we could do it a quarter of a century ago, we can do it now.
It’s just the modern minimalist trend.
1 Like
Just seen this , 37 note recently released, 61 note released in 2022
While it needs more knobs, the touch screen is what I wish was on the AstroLab
61 note is round £140 less than the AstroLab, so to my way of thinking, Arturia could have easily put in a touch screen and faders for the price
I personally really don’t get this minimalist is better mindset.
If I load some instruments in Analog Lab and I then open some of Native instruments instruments in komplete Kontrol, looking at the computer screen, it looks like they were both designed by the same person.
My concern with this is that NI has gone the minimalist route with its latest S mk3 controllers. The more Arturia software looks the same as Native Instruments (8 knobs controlling macros etc), the more I worry that when say the Keylab mk3 is released, this too will be very minimalist as it seems they both have a similar mindset in telling us what we want, and to me (not saying it’s a bad keyboard at all) the AstroLab is minimalistic compared to their previous offerings.
Here’s a couple of pics, one from Analog Labs, the other from Komplete Kontrol
1 Like
Also remember that they are not trying to create a synth here. They already have several synths of various shapes sizes and capabilities. All have been out long enough now to had several revisions. if you want to be twisting knobs in real time then that’s what you would go for.
What hasn’t been done is stage keyboard for the player.
It’s a different mentality. As a player, there is enough control in what they’ve offered. Sure the layout could still be improved upon and there’s a missed opportunity by not having the Polybrute’s expressive controller it still their first stage keyboard. I’m sure this one will undergo revisions as well.
2 Likes