Transport Controls

The transport is split between two regions of the Fusor player. The progress strip holds the two large transport buttons, Arm / Play / Pause on the left and Abort on the right. The controls that configure how the transition runs (the Run Mode switch, the Start-with-Incoming toggle and the Tempo Ramp toggle) live in the toolbar transition group, between the gear and book icons and the session-group icons.

This page lists what each control looks like in each state and what clicking it does. For the lifecycle these controls drive, see Arming and Running a Transition.

Changing the Run Mode switch or either toggle updates the persistent state message on the left of the status line. That, alongside the color change, is how the control confirms.

The Arm / Play / Pause button

The large left-hand button. Same button, different behaviors depending on the Fusor player state.

With Tempo Ramp armed, every Armed and Unarmed variant gains a with Tempo Ramp segment: Unarmed with Tempo Ramp, Armed with Tempo Ramp: ….

Mixed Run Mode starts as Auto does, so its start rows are the Auto rows above until the stop. Auto Run Mode's default start trigger is press Play, so the button is the Play button and there is no arm step. The Start-with-Incoming toggle changes this: when on, the button reverts to an arm dot and the transition starts when the incoming deck begins playing.

One more armed variant exists: if Start-with-Incoming is on and the incoming deck is already playing, the status line reads Armed: restart incoming deck to start. The trigger fires on the deck starting, so a deck that's already running has nothing to trigger on.

Two kinds of pause in Auto Run Mode. Pressing PAUSE stops the fusor's output while the timing window keeps ticking, so the remainder runs faster to finish at the moment it was originally due. Stopping the incoming deck in your DJ app stops the transition clock as well, and the finish time moves back by however long you waited. The catch-up is capped at twice the authored pace, so a pause too long to make up that way finishes late. See Arming and Running for the detail.

The Abort button

The large right-hand button. Press and hold for roughly 0.4 seconds to fire; a radial fill grows outward from the center while you hold, and releasing before it completes cancels the abort. A brief click does nothing. Once the hold completes, the transition is terminated immediately and permanently, and you do not have to let go first.

The hold applies to a mapped controller button too, and it is the same gesture: hold the pad, watch the on-screen fill, and the abort fires when the fill completes. Your controller has no display of its own, so the button on screen is where you watch the hold. A quick tap of the pad does nothing at all, and letting go early abandons the abort silently, because nothing was refused. Abort, and the Run Mode switch's positions while a run is under way, are the only controls that work this way; every other mapped button acts the moment you press it.

Abort is live while a transition is actually under way: running, paused, or in its setup pause. It is not live while the Fusor player is merely armed, because nothing has started. Disarm instead, by clicking the arm dot or toggling Start-with-Incoming off.

Aborting covers what an abort leaves behind, including the fact that it re-derives deck roles from the crossfader position rather than swapping them.

Use Abort when something has gone wrong and you need to bail out fast. For a moment's wait in an Auto run, use the Arm/Play/Pause button's Pause, which is resumable.

Its second face: RESTORE

This button has two states, and it is the same button either way:

RESTORE appears one second after an abort, if there is anything to put back.

For the first second after an abort the button still reads Abort and still is Abort. That's a guard against the reflex double-press, and it's in the engine, so it protects a hardware controller press too. On a controller it stays one button and one command: press it once to abort, again to restore, exactly as on screen.

The full behavior, what it restores, when it's silent and automatic and when it isn't offered at all, is in Putting things back.

The Run Mode switch

The leftmost control in the toolbar transition group: a pill holding three round positions, Auto (timer icon), Mixed (two overlapping circles) and Manual (hand). The lit position is filled blue and shows its icon; the other two show a small dot. Each position is pressed directly. Manual is the default, and your last choice is remembered across sessions. See Manual Run Mode vs Auto Run Mode.

You can change modes with a single press while a fusor is loaded but not yet running. A press on the lit position does nothing. Once a transition starts, the mode is locked and a press on any position is refused, with exceptions for a run that is on the clock, whether an Auto run or the clock part of a Mixed run before its stop. In that state, pressing and holding a position for about 0.4 seconds, the same hold Abort uses, changes the run:

After a Mixed run has stopped at the mix point, its mode cannot change. Holding Mixed when the run is already at or past the mix point is refused with Mixed: already past the mix point; holding Manual still takes the run over at any point. Mixed is refused on the same grounds as before a run (see When Mixed is unavailable).

Moving the crossfader by hand takes the run over only while the Fusor player can receive MIDI from your controller's crossfader, and then the switch moves to Manual the same way.

A quick press mid-run does nothing, and the hold's own fill is the confirmation step: it fills the position being held, and letting go before it completes cancels the change. The run's mode is judged again when the hold completes, so a hold that finishes after the run passed the mix point, stopped at it or ended is refused. Only one hold runs at a time. Switching between Auto and Mixed recalculates the countdown and the late-finish warning for the new target: the mix point in a Mixed run, the end of the transition in an Auto run. A mid-run change, takeover or switch, does not change which mode a new transition starts in, and a takeover also means nothing is put back at the end of the run. See Manual takeover for what each form of takeover changes.

A controller button bound to Run Mode steps through the positions in the order Auto, Mixed, Manual, then back to Auto, and skips Mixed when it is unavailable. During a run on the clock, the button's press is the same hold on Manual, so one held press is always the takeover. Three further controller functions, Run Mode: Auto, Run Mode: Mixed and Run Mode: Manual, each act as clicking that position on screen does, including the holds mid-run. See Functions (Fusor controller).

When Mixed is unavailable

Mixed is available only while the loaded fusor's mix point is Middle, or End on a fusor with an effect tail. With Start, End without an effect tail, or no mix point, the Mixed position is dimmed, and pressing it shows Mixed: no mix point to stop at. If you load such a fusor while the switch is on Mixed, the switch moves to Auto and the status line reads Mixed unavailable: set to Auto. The same move happens before the run if the fusor loses its tail while the switch is on Mixed: switching off the only domain that has Effect tail on, or a DJ app change that turns it off, leaves a plain End fusor. That move does not change the remembered choice, and loading a fusor that could run Mixed later, or switching the tailed domain back on, does not put the switch back on Mixed.

In Fusor Studio Lite the switch is locked on Auto: the Manual and Mixed positions are dimmed and a press is refused.

In Blind Mode only Auto can run, and a press on Mixed or Manual shows Blind Mode: Auto Run Mode only. The tooltip explains why: Manual and Mixed Run Modes follow the crossfader through telemetry. Blind Mode ignores telemetry, so only Auto Run Mode can run.

Switching to Manual also clears Start-with-Incoming, since the opt-in is an Auto Run Mode concept.

The Start-with-Incoming toggle

A chain-link toggle in the toolbar transition group, sitting between the Run Mode switch and the Tempo Ramp toggle. It picks which of Auto Run Mode's two start triggers is in force.

Toggling it is itself an arming gesture: on from idle arms the Fusor player in the Start-with-Incoming state, off from there disarms. Turning it on also switches the player to Auto Run Mode. In Manual Run Mode the toggle is enabled, and clicking it switches to Auto and arms in one gesture.

The preference is session-level: it holds across transitions until you change it, or until you switch the Run Mode switch to Manual.

When the toggle is disabled

Start-with-Incoming (deep dive) has the full treatment: how long the preference lasts, pause and resume differences, and the Tempo Ramp interaction.

The Tempo Ramp toggle

The rightmost icon in the toolbar transition group, a rising trend line with an arrowhead. It switches on a tempo-sync setup sequence, which runs as soon as the outgoing deck is playing, ahead of the transition itself.

Hovering a yellow toggle names what it's waiting on: the outgoing deck to start playing, a track to load on the incoming deck, or a retry after setup didn't complete.

Enable it before the transition starts. At the end of every transition, whether it completes or aborts, the toggle resets to off. Pressing it again sets the ramp up for the tracks on the decks at that moment, including a re-run of the same pair. If you load a different track on the incoming deck after the toggle turns blue, and before the transition starts, the ramp retargets to the new track. If the new track's tempo is too far off for the current setup, the toggle sets the ramp up again for the new track, as if you had switched it off and on.

In Blind Mode the toggle is disabled, tooltipped The tempo ramp needs telemetry to confirm the deck reached its target tempo, and Blind Mode ignores telemetry. That applies to the mode, not to any one fusor: no fusor includes a tempo ramp, so the toggle refuses whatever is loaded.

Apps that need the outgoing deck playing

Traktor requires a deck to be playing before it will make that deck tempo master, and the setup sequence needs the outgoing deck to hold that role. Nothing in the sequence needs the incoming deck to be playing.

• If the outgoing deck is already playing when you switch the toggle on, the setup sequence runs straight away.
• If it isn't, the sequence is queued and the toggle shows yellow until the outgoing deck starts.

A ramp that finishes setting up after the transition is already under way can be audible, and the status line says so: Tempo ramp late: may be audible.

Pause vs Abort: how they differ

A Manual run, and a Mixed run after its stop, has no pause. Progress stops when the crossfader stops.