- in Production by Bobby Owsinski
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New Music Gear Monday: Master The Mix Fuser Plugin
If you were to ask mixers what they spend the most time on, most would tell you it’s EQing to gain clarity for each mix element. The round-robin nature of going back and forth between groups of similar sounding elements takes a lot of time, at least when you’re setting the EQs manually. Thanks to some of the new smart unmasking plugins, this process can go a lot faster these days. The new Fuser by Mastering The Mix takes unmasking to a new place thanks to several unique features.
It’s All In The Sidechain
Like most unmasking plugins, Fuser uses its sidechain to get the job done. Let’s say you have a guitar and vocal that are clashing. Place Fuser on the guitar in the last insert slot, then send the vocal via a buss into the plugin’s input. Fuser automatically finds the places where the frequencies are clashing and shows them in red on the large display (yellow if the clash is on the sides). Hit the Resolve Conflict button and Fuser automatically ducks those frequencies on the guitar so both mix elements can now be heard clearly.
If you want to increase or decrease the processing, double click on the frequency display and you can now control the amount by moving it up or down. You can also use the manual controls on the bottom of the plugin for mid-side, Q, Attack and Release. Of course there’s also Input level, Mix and Output level controls. The input and output levels are indicated in LUFS.
If you want to really do some tweaking, click on the Delta button on the top of the plugin to clearly hear both signals. In order to hear both signals at the same level, there’s a Gain Stage Fix that sets the input level so you’re able to more easily hear the difference between both signals.
Let’s Rotate
A unique feature of Fuser is the Rotate control, which is an automatic phase cancellation reducer. Click on the button next to the control and it will automatically set the correct phase against the master channel (in this case, the vocal). This tends to have more effect on lower frequencies like bass and kick, but can be useful in any situation where the phase is a bit twisted.
Fuser is a very clever plugin that costs just $59. Yes, there’s a free trial, and yes, it’s available for both Mac and PC on all popular plugin formats.
Find out more here, or watch the video below for more information on how Fuser works.
