What to expect after one year

Lab AstroLab
#1

in three days, the Astrolab will celebrate its first birthday. Since last year, there were a couple of updates (including one almost-update that was only available for a short period an then retracted because of whatever).
The wishlist of us users for improvements grew quite long. What do you think, can we expect anything regarding updates in the near future?

Greetings, Richard (still believing in the concept but not as enthusiastic as in the beginning anymore)

3 Likes
#2

Hi Richard,
indeed, AstroLab was released just a year ago (in a few days), in April 2024.
Since then, there have been 2 full firmware updates:

  • in September 2024: update 1.3.0
    This version included 6 new instruments from V-Collection X (Acid V, MiniFreak V, Augmented Brass Augmented WoodWinds, MiniV4, WurliV3), as well as 290 new presets, and a couple improvements.

  • in December 2024: update 1.3.5
    This version included improvements to the MIDI implementation, and 5GHz (band A) WiFi support, as well as a few fixes.

The next update 1.4.x was accidentally posted in March, but I believe it will be released soon (in April 2025), and as far as we know, it will include compatibility with Pigments 6 presets (AstroLab is currently compatible up to Pigments 5) and with MiniFreak V3.0 presets (currently compatible with MiniFreak V2.0), and maybe some other improvements/fixes.

So, that will be the third update in one year (an update every 4 months in average).
And I’m sure there are more updates coming this year.
Arturia typically doesn’t announce upcoming releases in advance, but they’ve already stated that instruments that came out after V-Collection X would be added to AstroLab, so I would expect that update to be available in the next few months, based upon the timing of previous updates.
Arturia obviously has its own list of things they want/ already plan to add to AstroLab.
And there is indeed a wishlist from users of suggestions/request for improvements/features.
Now, as to which features/improvements will come and, when / in which order of priority, that info has not been published.

2 Likes
#3

in any case in my opinion, i love this project! and i hope to continue!
every ongoing project needs time to has a stability, Astrolab i think is a grade instrument over all by it’s own! and the only thing, every single instrument, preset, comes, and we can have it to our pcs, we can also have it and to a, standalone, grade synth, it’s a super grade thing!!!

Arturia keep up!!!

1 Like
#4

I love the sounds. I wish there were more drum loops to add Rhythm to live performances.

And last night I left my astrolab on and this morning it’s non responsive. Button press and keys do nothing. Frozen. A reboot fixed it. But why did this happen.

There should be default global settings that can be overridden in the preset. Then if you want the wheel to control a certain parameter in most presets you can set it once.

It would be nice to have tempo and arp settings more easily set and kept after reboot. And a easy to see the temp of arp presents.

Any idea how many were sold? That would be a good indicator of future support.

Cheers,

Kevin

1 Like
#5

I’m just about ready to put AL on the market, I’m losing hope that a normal MIDI implementation will ever make it to AL and its unusable to me the way MIDI works currently…

#6

Yesterday, 1.4.4 arrived along with Analog Lab 5.11.1.
It contains the announced compatibility with Pigments 6 and minifreak 3 as well as some improvements regarding the mirroring between Analog Lab and AL (which I in fact hadn’t missed).
There are also a couple of bugfixes.
Details can be found in Sean’s FB Post:

Of course the support of the new synth versions is a cool thing but old ranter Richard is a little bit disappointed as most of the user’s wishes from the wishlist-threads in this Forum haven’t been addressed at all. Especially improvements regarding expression pedal and controllers in general are still missing though highly expected.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about each and every update that makes AL better but I would love when the cool guys at arturia would put an extra eye on our wishes for the next updates to come.

Thanks guys, Richard