 This video is sponsored by DistroKid. Follow the VIP link in the description down below to get 7% off an already amazing price to distribute your music to the world. Imagine having access to some of the most renowned piano, synths, organs and vintage keys of all time. No, not on your computer in the studio but right there at your fingertips where you need them. Imagine the Arturia Astrolab. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. To celebrate their 25th anniversary Arturia have just released Astrolab, something they've described to me as their biggest flagship product to date. Now I've been playing with it for the last couple of weeks and I have to say thoroughly enjoying it but it's something a little bit different for this channel which is primarily focused on recording in your studio. This is something a little bit outside of that, although you can use it in the studio. So what exactly is Astrolab? In order to understand Astrolab you first need to understand Arturia's Analog Lab, a software plugin with thousands of presets for a really wide range of instruments, including classic analog and digital synths, electric pianos, organs and beautifully modeled acoustic pianos and in more recent times some original instruments including pigments and their augmented series. Now of course in the past you could take all of this out on the road with you, perhaps on a laptop connected to a controller keyboard and attempted to use Analog Lab in this way but it's fraught with problems in a live situation where you really need a lot of stability and really good usability. So what Arturia did is they took Analog Lab and basically put it inside this hardware keyboard with all of the advantages of stability and usability that you get with that. So let's take a look at that hardware. The Astrolab has 61 semi-weighted keys with velocity and after touch. The green or orange LEDs above each key highlight the note being played. The chassis, back and front are all made of metal and although the top is plastic it has a really nice quality to it as do the eight encoders with LED position rings. The various buttons feel firm and solid along with the pitch bend and modulation controls. Star of the show is the large color screen encoder. We use this to make menu selections or to scroll through instruments and we finally press it to make a selection. There's over 1,000 built-in sounds with over 7,000 free ones from Analog Lab Pro. Now although Astrolab does come with a very nice manual I didn't need to refer to it to use these controls. I found them to be very intuitive and well laid out. To the rear we have midi in and out ports as well as two auxiliary pedal ports and ports for expression and sustain pedals. To the right of this interestingly we have two audio ports. Now these are XLR quarter inch combos and they're for use with instruments such as Arturia's vocoder. A nice touch here is that the gain control can be pushed in. This stops it being accidentally adjusted or broken off during gigs. To the right again we have quarter inch ports for our left and right outputs as well as a quarter inch headphone socket. Next to this we have a USB A port. This can be used for storage or for connecting a midi controller which is handy if you say want to use an 88 key weighted keyboard. Next to this we see a USB C port. This is for connection to your computer and then finally we have a screw in port for the supply 12 volt power supply. So although we've got these handy buttons on the top to quickly select types of instruments you'll probably end up using that beautiful large dial with its color display in the middle where you can select by type by instrument even by artists such as say the Beatles or the Daws. But in a live situation you wouldn't want to be scrolling through potentially thousands of presets to find the next one that you want. So you can save favorites but more importantly you can set up playlists. But using the controls on the keyboard is not the only way to interact with Astrolab. Now using your local Wi-Fi network and the Astrolab connect app you can control your Astrolab using your mobile device. My favorite way to do this was with my iPad but you can use your phone as well. Now it's a little bit of a by the way as well as Wi-Fi Astrolab also has Bluetooth connectivity. Now with this one of the things that you can do is stream audio from say Spotify or something from your phone to Astrolab you'll be able to hear it in your headphones and play along with it which is a great tool for learning and practicing songs. Now as you may hope and expect Astrolab comes with a full version of Analog Lab. You can hook up to it on your computer and create things like your own presets or playlists and transfer those to your Astrolab. Now how many presets can you save? Well probably thousands depending on which instruments you're using. There is an internal storage though of around about 23 gigabytes. I think that's going to be more than enough for most of you. Now I should make a couple of quick mentions about compatibility. Astrolab is compatible with Analog Lab version 9 but not the previous versions. They've also said that as new instruments come out those will be usable with Astrolab as well. By the way don't forget to check out our sponsor DistroKid. If you're releasing your music to major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google Play etc they make it very affordable and very easy and if you use that VIP link in the description down below you're going to get further 7% off of your first year. Astrolab also includes some basic recording and MIDI looping functionality. Now as well as of course recording things like the notes and the velocity of those notes that you play it also records changes you make to the sounds via things like the encoders as well and although it's a kind of a basic functionality it is of course just really easy to use. Now I don't think I've come across a keyboard from Arturia without cord and arpeggiator functionality and the Astrolab is no exception to that. There's a classic synth arpeggiator on there. I'm not going to go into detail with that now but it's worth knowing it's there and also of course chord functionality enabling you to play whole chords with just one note. Now although this is primarily a live instrument it does have its use in the studio especially if you're used to recording with analog lab so what you can do is hook up Astrolab use it to control analog lab inside of your door that will be completely synced up and then when you actually record you'll record the sound from analog lab but monitor it from Astrolab meaning you'll get completely latency free monitoring while you're recording. Now as we know that's a huge benefit because we do tend to suffer from latency in complex projects when we're recording virtual instruments. Now of course you can also use it as a MIDI keyboard controller to control other virtual instruments as well. Now I've got to say I've enjoyed using this over the last couple of weeks just because of its sort of immediacy there's something nice about just switching on a keyboard and getting some sound without having to go through a computer and open up software etc. I've really enjoyed using pigments on this or the pigments presets I love the augmented series I really like the modelled acoustic pianos and some of the classic keys as well I just really like things like B3s and you know whirly sort of sounds and all that kind of thing that's just my particular preference let me know what your favorite instruments from the analog collection would be to use on Astrolab. Is this going to revolutionize things for you if you're a live player let me know in the comments down below. As ever don't forget to subscribe and like and I'll see you in the next video.