It's a sampling pedal. But I believe it's not like that line six stuff where you flip a switch and your acoustic guitar sounds like a recording of a telecaster. As I understand it, it is supposed to dress up the pickup signal with the resonance, "air" and envelope of a good mic in a nice room. It's supposed to restore the mic'ed quality. Supposedly, you can send them a recording of your instrument through the pickup you use and they process it and you upload it to the preamp, and you have a patch based on your axe.
I've never tried one, don't know how well it works. I got this response last night from Fishmann: "We've been on that since the start of the Aura, actually. It has been difficult. It has been hard to adapt Aura to instruments with lower fundamentals, like bass. It is definitely on our radar (our founder, president and creative guru Larry Fishman is a bass player himself). Nobody wants to see this product more than him. Hopefully, someday..."