Playback in Demo

This tutorial covers the player window end to end. You load one fusor, run it across a transition, and name every part of the window as you reach it. It works in Demo, so nothing here needs a licence.

The fusor is Classic EQ Swap, and it drives two things at once. A three-band EQ swap across both decks: the outgoing track's lows roll away, the incoming track's lows come up to take their place, and the highs cross over the other way. Under that, a matched pair of curves on the two channel faders, shaped so the combined loudness stays steady rather than dipping in the middle. The channel-fader half on its own is what sweeping a crossfader already does; the EQ half is six knobs moving across two decks on authored curves, which is the half that needs a fusor.

The fusor names no DJ app, so it loads whichever app you set up, and it needs nothing in your host beyond two loaded decks.

This tutorial assumes a mouse. Every step is written as a click, and two of them are right-clicks. The player can also be driven from a hardware controller: arm/play, abort, the Run Mode toggle, Tempo Ramp, next/previous fusor and the eight pads can each be bound to a physical button, which is how you would run it mid-set with your hands on your controller rather than on a mouse. Binding one is a job of its own, so leave it until after this. See Hardware Controller.

Before you start

• Setup finished, with a status line reading Unarmed and no UNCAPTURED prefix.
• Two tracks loaded in your DJ app, on the deck pair you chose during setup.
• Two tracks whose transition works over 16 bars. Demo runs every transition at that length and no other, so pick material where 16 bars is a sensible blend.
• A decision about your crossfader. Nothing to do yet. How you normally control deck volume decides whether this fusor's channel-fader half runs or not, and step 6 walks both ways through it.

1. Get the fusors into your library

Classic EQ Swap is one of the bundled example files. If you pressed Add Example Files during setup, it is already in your library and you can go to step 2. If you did not, press that button now: it is in Settings → General under Example Files, on the first Guided Setup screen, and in the Fusors list while that list is empty. See Setup, step 2 for what the button does and what it leaves alone.

2. Make Tutorials the active collection

A collection is a named group of fusors, and its job is to narrow the fusor picker. The picker offers one collection at a time, the active collection, so during a set it lists the handful of fusors you are playing tonight instead of everything you own.

Two collections come with the example files. Samples holds all ten example fusors. Tutorials holds two: Classic EQ Swap, which this tutorial runs, and Constant-Power Crossfade, which the last tutorial builds its own version of. Make Tutorials the active one:

1. Click Library in the menubar. The Library window opens.
2. In its header, click Fusors. That section has two sub-tabs, Collections and Fusors. You want Collections.
3. Right-click the Tutorials row and choose Set Active.

The row's name turns blue and bold, which is how the active collection is marked. One collection is active at a time: if another one already was, the menu item reads Set Active (switch) and choosing it moves the marker. Deactivate on the active row clears it, which leaves the picker unscoped.

Close the Library window. Changing the active collection later is the same three steps, written up as a reference in Loading a fusor → Changing the active collection, and the definition is in Key Concepts → Collection.

3. Meet the player window

Before you touch anything, learn the four regions. Top to bottom:

Right now the picker reads Select Fusor..., the status line reads Unarmed, and the telemetry light is green.

The window is a fixed 384 by 148 pixels and floats above your other windows. It is meant to sit in a corner of your screen during a set without being managed.

4. Load the fusor

1. Click the fusor picker. The Library window opens beside the player on the Fusors section, with a Tutorials chip already in its filter bar so the list holds that collection's fusors and nothing else. That focus is what step 2 bought you.
2. Click the row for Classic EQ Swap.

The Library window closes on its own and the picker now reads Classic EQ Swap. The status line confirms the load.

Loading a fusor changes nothing in your DJ app. No controls move and nothing is sent. Fusor Studio now holds a definition of what to do when a transition starts.

5. Read what it's going to do

Click the info icon beside the picker. A panel opens between the menubar and the picker row, and the player window grows upward to make room, so the panel appears above the strip you were just looking at. (Near the top of your screen there is no room to grow upward, and the window grows down instead.) This is Session View, the pre-flight surface.

For this fusor it shows two cards: 3-Band EQ and Channel Fader. Session View orders domains by signal flow, not by the order the author added them.

A domain is a group of related controls that the fusor drives, and it spans both deck roles at once: the 3-Band EQ domain covers the outgoing deck's three EQ knobs and the incoming deck's three. Its per-role halves are its sides, the outgoing side and the incoming side. One switch turns the whole domain off and on, both sides together; the incoming side cannot be disabled while the outgoing side keeps running.

Which parameters are modulated

Click the 3-Band EQ card. It expands into two columns, outgoing on the left and incoming on the right, and under each are the parameters that side drives: low, mid, high. A parameter the fusor drives is written in blue and underlined; one the domain covers but the author left alone is grey. So the card answers two questions at once: which controls the domain reaches, and which of them are going to move. In this fusor all six EQ parameters are driven, so all six are blue.

Click the Channel Fader card. Only one card is open at a time, so the EQ card closes. This one carries a single parameter per side, volume.

Curves, and reading one

Each of those parameters is driven along a curve. A curve is a function of progress rather than of time: x runs from 0 to 1 across the transition, y is the value sent to the control. That is why one fusor can run over 16 bars or 64 without being re-authored, and why the same shape holds whether a timer or your hand is advancing progress.

With a card expanded, hover a parameter name. A small preview of that parameter's curve appears beside it. Click the name instead and you get a larger one, with the author's control points marked; it closes on Escape or a click outside it.

Hover low on the outgoing side, then low on the incoming side. The first holds at centre for the opening third of the transition, then drops to near-silent by about two thirds through and stays there. The second is its mirror: cut at the start, up to centre by the same point. Read as a pair, they are the swap, and they are the reason the two tracks' bass never fight. mid lifts a little at the midpoint before it falls, and high crosses over gradually across the whole run.

Click the info icon again, or the chevron in the menubar, to put the panel away. The full tour of Session View, including the edits you can make there, is in Loading a fusor → Session View.

6. Your crossfader, and the Channel Fader domain

The Channel Fader domain is in this fusor for the DJ who controls deck volume with the two channel faders rather than with the crossfader. Which of those you do decides what to set up here. The EQ half runs either way.

If you mix on the channel faders, leave the Channel Fader domain enabled and put your crossfader in bypass (some DJ apps call it through mode). Bypass matters because Fusor Studio drives the crossfader itself during an Auto run: the crossfader is the progress actuator, so it travels whether you touch it or not. While it is still in the signal path, its own curve moves deck volumes underneath the fusor's curves. Parking it in the centre does not avoid that. Where the setting lives depends on your DJ app, so check its manual. Later, in Bypass the Crossfader, and Put It Back, you build a pair of actions that does this for you.

If you mix on the crossfader, turn the Channel Fader domain off: click the orange switch on that card in Session View. The card dims and the status line reads Channel Fader domain disabled for session. The fusor then drives EQ only, and your crossfader's own travel does the volume crossfade as it always has. Those last two words matter. The switch is a session edit: it applies to this loaded fusor for this run, never touches the file, and is gone the next time you load the fusor.

The three deck-level setups in full, and what each one costs, are in Crossfader Setup and Deck-Level Modulation.

7. Auto Run Mode and its readout

Demo runs every transition in Auto Run Mode, where a clock drives progress from 0% to 100% at an even pace. In the menubar's middle group, the leftmost icon is a small stopwatch, the Mode toggle. In Demo it is locked on: filled blue as it is whenever Auto is selected, not greyed out, and the pointer shows as blocked over it because a click does nothing. Hover it for the reason: "Demo runs transitions on the clock so you can see how they work. Manual Run Mode needs a license." Leave the chain-link icon beside it, Start-with-Incoming, switched off. The transition then starts when you press Play.

Look at the middle of the progress strip. Three numbers appeared when the fusor loaded:

Click the BPM figure and input your desired beatmatched tempo, or the tempo on the incoming deck, whichever tempo the transition will run at. The duration changes with it, which is how a Demo run is matched to the material you are playing.

The full set of Demo limits, and what a licence lifts, is in Licensing.

8. Prepare your decks

In your DJ app:

1. Start the outgoing deck playing. Fusor Studio refuses to start a transition whose outgoing deck is not playing. Until it is, the status line drops its invitation to press Play, and a press is refused with GATE2.
2. Cue the incoming deck. In Auto Run Mode it does not have to be playing for the transition to start, so this is about your mix rather than about the player: start it whenever you would normally start it to beat-match.
3. Set your levels for the start of the transition. With the Channel Fader domain enabled, put the outgoing deck's channel fader at 100% and the incoming deck's at 0%, which is where the two curves begin. With it disabled, leave both faders up and your crossfader hard over on the outgoing side.

The EQ knobs need no preparation. The fusor sends absolute values, so at the start of the run the outgoing deck's three bands snap to centre and the incoming deck's snap to cut, wherever you left them.

In Demo the left deck is always the outgoing one and the right deck always the incoming one, so set your decks up that way round.

9. Run the transition

The arm/play control at the left end of the progress strip reads PLAY, and the status line reads:

Armed: Press Play to start

Play starts the transition as soon as it is pressed. Press PLAY at the point you would normally bring the incoming track in.

Four things happen, and each is worth watching:

• The progress meter fills behind the transport buttons, advancing on its own.
• The six EQ knobs in your DJ app move, three per deck, the outgoing set coming down as the incoming set comes up.
• The two channel faders move as well, outgoing down and incoming up, unless you turned that domain off in step 6.
• The status line switches to Playing in green and the telemetry light stays green, meaning your DJ app is answering.

The demo is constrained to running transitions from left to right, so your crossfader will jump to the left when the transition starts. In a licensed player the crossfader starts from its last position and transitions run in both directions.

The button now reads PAUSE. Press it and the fusor stops sending; the controls freeze where they are and the timing window carries on, so resuming runs the remainder faster to finish when it originally would have. Stopping the incoming deck instead stops the clock itself, and restarting the deck picks up at the original pace. Your First Transition covers both in detail.

10. Finish it

Progress reaches 100% and the status line reads:

Completed — stop outgoing deck or press End.

The arm/play control has changed into an END button. The transition is at its end but not finished, because Fusor Studio is waiting to see the outgoing deck stop. Two ways out:

• Stop the outgoing deck in your DJ app. Completion proceeds on its own.
• Press END. This commits the transition immediately. It does not stop your outgoing track; it tells Fusor Studio to stop treating that deck as the outgoing side.

Take the second option: press END.

Watch the outgoing deck's EQ knobs as it commits: they return to where they were before the run. That is snapshot restore, which is on by default and covers the EQ but not the channel faders, so the faders stay where the run left them. The full completion sequence is in Arming and Running → Completion and role swap.

The player returns to its idle state with the same fusor still loaded. In Demo the deck roles stay as they were, left outgoing and right incoming, so a second run goes the same direction and you re-cue both decks to watch it again.

What you learned

• That collections narrow the fusor picker, and that one of them is active at a time.
• The four regions of the player window and the controls in each.
• That loading a fusor is inert, and that PLAY starts the transition as soon as it is pressed.
• That a domain spans both deck roles, its per-role halves are sides that enable together, and Session View names the parameters each side drives.
• That every parameter is driven along a curve read against progress rather than time, and that you can see the shape by hovering the parameter's name.
• That a fusor's channel-fader half is there for fader mixing, and comes off with one switch if the crossfader is what you mix on.
• That in Auto Run Mode a clock drives progress, bars with BPM decide how long the run takes, and the incoming deck does not have to be playing for a run to start.
• That completion waits on the outgoing deck, and END is how you commit without waiting.
• That Demo runs left deck to right deck at a fixed 16 bars.

Where to next

• Activate Your License — lift the Demo limits, including Manual Run Mode and a transition length you choose.
• Your First Transition — the same ground in both Manual and Auto Run Mode, with the differences side by side.
• The Player Window — every control in the window, as a reference rather than a walkthrough.
• Arming and Running a Transition — the full lifecycle: the setup pause, the two kinds of pause, manual takeover, abort, completion.