Settings

The Settings window is where Fusor Studio's configuration lives. Open it from the player window's gear icon (or Ctrl+, on Windows, Cmd+, on the Mac). It opens as its own window beside the player window, with the tabs down the left side.

A shipped build has nine tabs:

Guided Setup, Connection, General, App Compatibility, Mapping, Guards, Logging, License, About & Updates.

Settings saves as you go. Change a dropdown or toggle a switch on any tab and it is written immediately. There is no Save or Apply button anywhere in Settings and no way to cancel out of an edit, so to undo something you change it back.

Settings is unavailable while a transition is running, and an open window closes itself when one starts. See The Player Window for what the lock does and what happens to unsaved bindings.

Fusor Studio reopens Settings on the tab you were last on.

What each tab covers

Four tabs are documented on this page. Four have chapters of their own. App Compatibility is explained where it comes up.

Connection

Connection holds three cards, DJ app, DJ controller and Fusor controller, each with a status light and word beside its title and one plain sentence underneath saying what that state means. It mirrors the order Guided Setup asks for things in, so it is the place to come back to when one of them changes.

Connection says whether each link works and lets you choose what is connected. It does not edit a controller profile: naming, renaming, deleting a profile, or changing its MIDI input, all happen on the Mapping page instead, which Connection links to.

DJ app

• DJ application. Which app Fusor Studio is controlling, chosen from the apps it has mappings for. It selects the mapping entries in Mapping's DJ app tab, decides whether a tempo ramp routine exists, and determines how a capture behaves.
• MIDI bus. The virtual MIDI port Fusor Studio sends on and listens on. The list only offers ports that exist as both an input and an output, since Fusor Studio uses one bus in both directions. If the bus you created isn't in the list, it does not exist as both an input and an output. On the Mac, the bus shows Fusor Studio, Fusor Studio's own connection, until you choose another. See Connect Your DJ App for bus setup and Troubleshooting when a bus is present but nothing arrives.
• Deck pair. Left deck and Right deck, which tell Fusor Studio which two decks your crossfader actually mixes. Deck A to Deck D are offered; the default pair is A and B. The two must differ; picking the same deck twice shows Left and right deck must differ and saves nothing until you fix it.

The card's light is grey with no DJ app chosen. Once you've chosen one it is green Connected while Fusor Studio receives MIDI from it, or red Not connected otherwise, and a button sits beside the status word either way: Connect and sync while the light is red, Resync while it is green. Its tooltip notes that a capture may cause a brief audio glitch. A check that fails turns the light red, with the reason under the card, even if your DJ app answered earlier; it turns green again when a check succeeds. Either label runs a Control State Capture, the same one Blind Mode covers: it asks the DJ app for its control positions, and the light turns green when it answers. It stays available whether the light is red or green, because a capture is also how Fusor Studio re-establishes deck roles.

With a Blind Mode you turned on, the light is grey with no status word and no Connect and sync button: there is nothing a check could change while Blind Mode ignores telemetry. An automatic Blind Mode, after a failed capture, reads differently: the light stays red, with the failure's sentence under the card and Connect and sync still shown, because pressing it leaves Blind Mode and captures.

Changing the DJ app, the bus or the deck pair rebuilds Fusor Studio's connection to your DJ app. That is one of the reasons Settings won't open while a transition is running: a rebuild mid-mix would stop the transition.

DJ controller

One dropdown, Controller profile, listing every profile you've created plus None. Choosing a profile makes it your DJ controller and connects it, using the MIDI input stored in that profile; choosing None disconnects. The note underneath reads "Create or edit profiles on the Mapping page."

The same active profile is shared with Mapping ▸ DJ controller: a change on either page updates both at once.

The card's light is grey None chosen with no profile picked, green Connected once its MIDI input is open, and orange otherwise, reading Not connected if no MIDI input has been set yet or Not plugged in if one has but the port isn't there.

Fusor controller

One dropdown, Controller. With a DJ controller chosen it lists Same as my DJ controller (the default), None, then separate profiles. With no DJ controller chosen it has one entry, None, and the Fusor controller is off until you pick a profile. Only profiles whose MIDI input differs from the DJ controller's are offered; a profile on the DJ controller's own input never appears here, because the two controllers can't share an input. Choosing that profile as your DJ controller afterward returns this card to Same. Profile editing for a separate choice is on Mapping ▸ Fusor controller, not here.

On Same, the Fusor controller and the DJ controller are the same device, so this card's light follows the DJ controller card. With a separate profile chosen, the card gets its own light: green Connected, orange Not plugged in reading "<name> is your Fusor controller, but <port> is not plugged in. Plug it in and Fusor Studio connects to it by itself. If it shows up under a different name, check the controller's MIDI input on the Mapping page.", or grey once the profile has no MIDI input set yet.

With a DJ controller chosen, None means no Fusor controller: the DJ controller's Fusor controls (bindings such as Arm / Play and Next Fusor, and its Shift keys) do nothing, its learned controls are still watched, and no second device is opened. The card's light reads grey None chosen. Nothing is deleted from the profile, so choosing Same again brings its Fusor controls back.

A separate Fusor controller also splits what fires Fusor Studio: only its own buttons do, and Fusor functions bound on the DJ controller's profile stop firing until you switch this card back to Same. See Hardware Controller → Two controllers, one job each.

General

• Library folder. The root folder Fusor Studio reads your fusors, actions, packs, step sets and collections from. The field is read-only; Browse... picks a different folder. Until you choose one, it shows the suggested folder with a Use this folder button that keeps it. No examples are checked for or installed until the folder is chosen. See Installation for what lives inside it.
• Example Files. Downloads example fusors, actions, collections and packs from fusorstudio.com into that folder. The line at the top says what is available, with Check now, or Retry when the last check failed. Below it the examples are listed under New, Newer versions, and Needs a newer Fusor Studio, which are shown greyed and cannot be installed. Click Install all, or tick examples and click Install selected. A collection or pack installs with the fusors and actions in it. A newer version installs next to the one you have. Nothing you already have is changed or replaced. While anything can be installed, the General tab shows a count. See Example versions.
• Check for new examples at launch. Once a day, when Fusor Studio starts, check fusorstudio.com for new examples and newer versions. On by default. Nothing is installed until you choose it, and there is no check while a transition is running. Check now works with this off.
• Always on Top. Keeps the player window above your DJ app, including when the DJ app is full screen. On by default.
• Show tooltips. Shows a description when you hover over a control, in every window. On by default. Turning it off takes effect immediately in every open window, and removes every hover tooltip, including the ones that explain why a control is unavailable and the one that shows a cut-off status message in full.
• Show Manual Role Swap while Online. Whether the Swap button appears in the toolbar while telemetry is working. On by default. Blind Mode always shows the button no matter how this is set. See Manual Role Swap.
• Set channel faders when swapping roles. On by default. When you swap roles, the new outgoing deck's channel fader goes to full and the new incoming deck's goes to zero. The faders are left where they are if the deck that becomes incoming is playing with its fader up, and always in Blind Mode. The automatic swap when a transition completes moves nothing. See Faders and crossfader after a swap.
• Reset crossfader when swapping roles. On by default. When you swap roles, the crossfader moves all the way to the new outgoing deck's side. Same conditions as the setting above.
• Tempo range restore. Two choices, Always (the default) or Keep usable, governing how the tempo ramp puts a deck's tempo range back afterwards. Always restores exactly what it found, which can leave the deck's tempo fader pinned at the end of its travel with the tempo still correct. Keep usable leaves a range widened rather than pinning the fader. The status line reports a pinned fader as TR8.
• Turn on key lock during tempo ramps. On by default. Before the tempo ramp starts, the Fusor player turns key lock on for each deck where it is off, so neither track's pitch changes with its speed. When the transition completes, it turns key lock back off on those decks only. After an abort or a disarm, key lock stays on. Off: the tempo ramp does not change key lock.
• Mix mark. When the progress strip draws the orange mark at the loaded fusor's mix point. Three choices: Never, Always (the default) or Only in Mixed, which draws it while the Run Mode switch is on Mixed. While it is hidden, the mix point draws as a gray quarter mark. It changes only what the strip shows. See The mix mark and quarter marks.
• Quarter marks. Whether the progress strip draws small gray marks at the start, a quarter, half, three quarters and the end. On or off; on by default. It is independent of Mix mark and changes only what the strip shows. See The mix mark and quarter marks.
• Show stems glyph in Fusor lists. Whether the Fusors list, and so the fusor picker, draws the stem deck mark on a fusor that needs a stem deck. On by default. Off hides the mark only: the Stems filter chip and the Stems sort still work. See Loading from the Fusors list view.

Guards

Guards are the engine's tolerances. They exist because the Fusor player has to tell its own MIDI output apart from your hands on the mixer, and has to decide when moving a control would be audible. Changing these values changes engine behavior.

The defaults are the tested values. Each field has a one-line description in the UI and an info icon that expands a worked example.

Echo Detection

Your DJ app usually echoes back every message the Fusor player sends it. These two settings stop the player mistaking that echo for you touching something.

Role Detection

Which deck is outgoing and which is incoming is read from the crossfader, and these thresholds stop the roles switching back and forth when the fader sits near the middle.

Between Low and High, the existing role assignment holds.

Inaudible Detection

These decide when a control can be moved without the change being audible.

When a control counts as taken over has no setting. Any value from the control that is not an echo of what the Fusor player sent produces CTL6 on the status line: the player releases that one control to you for the rest of the run and leaves it where you put it.

Takeover Permissions

Turn off Allow knob takeover during a run and moving a control while the run is playing does not release it to you: the Fusor player keeps modulating it, and the status line names the control the first time this happens to it in a run (CTL9). This applies in every Run Mode. Moving a control while an Auto run, or a Mixed run before its stop, is paused always releases it to you, whatever this setting says. A Manual run, and a Mixed run after its stop, has no pause, so with this setting off a control in it cannot be taken until the run ends or is aborted.

Allow crossfader takeover during a run is available while your controller's crossfader has a MIDI mapping, which you make by learning the crossfader in Mapping ▸ DJ controller. With it on, moving the crossfader to where the Fusor player has it takes the whole transition over: the run switches to Manual and the crossfader drives progress from then on, the same takeover as holding Manual on the Run Mode switch. With it off, the player keeps moving the crossfader. Without that mapping, the setting is shown unavailable, with a note linking to DJ controller. Holding Manual on the Run Mode switch takes a running transition over in every case.

ERA (Encounter Rate Adaptation)

ERA is how the Fusor player deals with a control that isn't where the fusor's curve expects it to be when the transition starts. The author drew a curve from one value to another; your deck might be somewhere else entirely.

Rather than jump the control to the curve's starting value, the Fusor player moves it onto the curve. The control moves from wherever you left it until it meets the authored curve, touching it without crossing it, and from that point follows the curve exactly as written. The author's curve is never redrawn: what you hear from the meeting point on is what they drew.

Three things decide how the control converges on the curve, and none of them is a setting:

• Where it meets the curve. About 45% of the way through the run, where the authored move is over before that.
• How fast it may travel. Never faster than a full-scale move taking half the run. If meeting at 45% would need more speed than that, it meets the curve later instead. The limit is a maximum, and a short move is spread across the whole time to the meeting point.
• When it waits instead. If the curve is going to arrive at the control's own value early in the run, the control stands still until it does, and then goes with it. Nothing moves and nothing is heard.

When nothing can be heard, the control is set directly. A control sitting behind an effect that is switched off isn't audible, so there is nothing to smooth over. If the fusor switches that effect on at the start of the transition, the Fusor player puts the control straight at its starting value while the effect is still off, and opens the effect a fraction of a second later. What you hear is the effect opening the way the author wrote it. The same applies in reverse: where the fusor holds an effect off at the start, the control behind it plays as written from the beginning.

A flat curve, one value held for the whole transition, has nothing to converge on, so the control moves to that value at the same speed limit and holds there for the rest of the run.

There is no status message for any of this. The control moves, which you can see and hear.

Flat Curve Threshold (0.01) is how close a curve's start and end must be to count as flat, which is the test for the held-value case above. It is the only ERA setting.

Runtime

Progress Emit Rate (ms), default 16, is the shortest interval between progress-bar updates sent to the UI. 16 ms is roughly 60 updates a second. Higher numbers are lighter on the CPU and choppier to look at. It affects the display only.

Transition Behavior

Two switches that aren't tolerances at all, both on by default.

• Snapshot / Restore. Before a transition starts, the Fusor player records the outgoing deck's control positions and the current FX-unit-to-deck assignments; after it completes, it puts them back. Recording needs telemetry, so in Blind Mode there is no baseline to read and nothing to put back. See Arming and running.

  Turning it off disables Restore only. Domains set to Home still go to their home positions, because that needs no baseline. Home is also the one end-of-run choice that works in Blind Mode.

  What happens to the outgoing deck's controls at the end of a transition is set per domain, on an End of run dropdown on each domain card, and there are three choices: Leave, Restore, and Home. Only Restore needs a baseline, so this switch governs Restore and nothing else. Out of the box, Channel Fader is on Leave, FX Unit is on Home, and everything else is on Restore. The full rules, and why those defaults are what they are, live at Domains → End of run.

  An FX unit's deck assignment is a separate mechanism from its knobs, restored only when Auto-assign FX units to decks (below) is also on: with both settings on, your FX units are routed back to the decks they were on beforehand. With Auto-assign off, the Fusor player never records the assignment to restore, so FX units stay routed wherever the transition left them.

• Auto-assign FX units to decks (Traktor, Mixxx). When a transition starts, the Fusor player routes FX units to the incoming and outgoing decks according to where the fusor places them, and clears the unit from the other decks. In Traktor it also sets each unit's Routing Selector to the fusor's Mode for that side, Insert or Post Fader. Arming alone leaves your DJ app untouched. With it off, assign FX units and set their routing by hand before you arm. Otherwise each effect plays on whichever deck its unit is already assigned to. See FX Routing.

Reset All Guards to Defaults

The button at the bottom of the tab restores every numeric field to the values above, turns Snapshot / Restore back on, and turns both takeover permissions back on. It does not change Auto-assign FX units to decks.

License

License reports what this copy of Fusor Studio is licensed for, and is where you sign in and out. Its Account block signs you in with a one-time code: type the email address on your account, click Send Code, then type the emailed code and click Sign In. Signed in, the block offers Check License and Sign Out. The walkthrough is the end of Setup.

Two lines, read independently:

• Fusor Studio is Licensed, Licensed (Free Trial) or Unlicensed (Lite). On a Free Trial the tab also shows the date it ends. A Free Trial ends on that date whether or not you are online, and the computer returns to Fusor Studio Lite at the next start.
• Fusor Studio Plus reads Not active. Plus is a planned add-on and is not available yet.

Signed in, the account block also shows a Last confirmed row: the date the license service last confirmed the license. It appears in every signed-in state, online or not.

Opened while the startup license check is still running, the block reads "Checking your license with the license service…" and Check License and Sign Out are unavailable. It updates on its own once the check finishes.

Offline, or when the license service has had a problem, the block keeps showing your account (address, this computer, and Last confirmed) and adds a line saying the license keeps working. When a date applies, the line also gives it, following "Confirm it online by" with the date the license next needs confirming. No sign-in form appears while a saved sign-in is only unconfirmed.

Unlicensed, the tab also lists the three limits of Fusor Studio Lite, one line each: Every transition runs at 16 bars., Manual and Mixed Run Modes are unavailable. and Making or changing fusors needs a license. Session View changes, Actions and notes are allowed. A Get a License button opens the Licensing page in your browser. While a saved sign-in is checking or unconfirmed, a plain Read about licensing link takes the button's place.

The tab reports what the running application is licensed for, which is not always what is stored. Fusor Studio reads your license once at startup, so a change made while the app is running does not take effect until you restart. That covers activating a license and signing out, which returns the computer to Fusor Studio Lite and frees its slot on your account. If Fusor Studio cannot reach the website when you sign out, you are still signed out, and the tab says the slot could not be freed and links to your account dashboard, where you can free it. Until you restart, the tab shows the license you are actually running under and the line Your license has changed. Restart Fusor Studio to apply it.

When a sign-in does not complete

• The code is wrong or has expired. A red box reads That code did not work. Type it again, or send a new one. The license service does not say which of the two happened. Send a New Code sends another to the same address; Use a different address returns to the email field.
• The account holds no license. The block reads This account does not hold a license yet. An account whose Free Trial has ended reads Your Free Trial has ended. You can buy a license on the website. instead.
• Both of the account's computers are in use. A license covers two computers. The block names the limit and offers Open your account dashboard, where you free a slot. Then click Check License.

Signing out

Signing out removes the license from this computer and frees its slot on your account, which is how you move a license to another computer. Click Sign Out, then Sign Out again in the Sign out? dialog. The block returns to the Email address field, and the restart line appears, because the running app is still licensed until its next start. Signing straight back in with the same account clears the restart line again.

The key in the toolbar

A key icon appears in the player window's toolbar, right of the book icon, when the license needs you to act. On a healthy license it is absent. Click it to open Settings → License; during a transition it is dimmed, the click does nothing, and the tooltip adds Settings opens after the run.

Being offline does not show the key until the confirm date is within 7 days.

Tabs with chapters of their own

• Guided Setup re-runs the first-run wizard. Setup covers what the wizard does not say on screen; the subject matter behind each screen belongs to Connect Your DJ App, Traktor Pro and Hardware Controller.
• Mapping holds three tabs. DJ app is the Send and Test buttons for every canonical mapping entry, one row per control and one column per deck, with the output mapping file editor above the grid; see Teach Mode. DJ controller and Fusor controller are controller profiles, MIDI Learn and the binding table; see Hardware Controller.
• Logging is verbose mode, per-category levels and the Open log folder / Reveal current log file / Clear logs buttons. See Logging.
• About & Updates shows the version you're running, whether a newer build has been found, and the Check now and Restart & Install buttons. See Updating Fusor Studio.