hey what's going on out there i'm sean divine hope you all are doing well in this video we're
going to be taking a close listen to the all-new ssl fusion plugins specifically i'm going to be
mastering a track from scratch some of you might be familiar with my mastering video that i did
for the ssl fusion hardware which that's something that i've been utilizing in my studio for a while
now but for those of you who don't have that and you've been waiting for something that's going to
give you that processing these plugins are really exciting not only can we use them throughout our
entire session but we can also utilize them on the stereo buss which is you know my favorite
use of the fusion there's some unique things about the plugins some new functionality that actually
make these even more flexible than the hardware but just to note this is not a comparison in any
way or not intended to be fundamentally they are different but that's not to say that you can't get
similar results and you know comparably great sounding results all right so a couple of
things to note before we get started the uh ssl native bus compressor 2 is the first plug-in
in my mastering chain i have this on here just because i use a very light ratio provides some
glue if you're interested in the details of why i'm utilizing this and how i set it up i'll put
a link to it and then we're going directly into the fusion plugins which i've ordered these in the
same order that they would be in the hardware so first we have the ssl fusion vintage drive
we have the fusion violet eq then we have the hf compressor and that is followed by the stereo
image now finally i have a maximizer or a limiter here just as a safety net it's parked at zero so
again that's just so that we're not clipping in the video let's take a listen to the mix
all right so that gives you a good idea of what we're working with in the mix first module
vintage drive one of my favorites from the fusion hardware it gives you this very pleasant yet edgy
thickness to the sound but we can utilize this very lightly or we can drive it pretty
aggressively you know on things like vocals the great thing about the plug-in is we have a mix
control which makes this even more flexible in terms of using it on any number of sources but
also on the stereo buss i just find this to be really useful i'm going to go ahead and activate
the plug-in and i'm also going to turn the wet all the way up to 100 we're going to bring that
back here but let's turn the drive and the density up and just get a feel for it and adjust as needed
with it mixed in at 100 you can already hear a huge difference
just in that lift and in that perceived loudness the saturation we're getting across our mix
really nice but i'm gonna dial that back a little bit it's the power of this control here
we can just kind of blend that in and make it uh you know as noticeable or as subtle as we want
now just to note we also have an auto gain control so those of you who are more
sensitive about level matching you can turn that on and match it there we also have eco
mode that's going to make the plug-in low latency so you'll be able to track with it
but also it's going to make it more resourceful in terms of your cpu so very handy to have that
control all right up next we have the violet eq and this was released most recently in terms of
the plugins and i will have to say that this is probably my favorite module in the fusion hardware
and it sounds really good here in plug-in form as well we also have a new fat control and that's
going to introduce some resonance here at the bump on our high-pass filter so it can just add some
thickness and a little bit more impact there when we adjust that let's go ahead and turn
it on and i'm going to adjust the high notch very very appropriate for mastering
because you can get that sheen but it's not harsh it won't take your head off we're going
to take a look at how we follow this with the high frequency compressor that is just going
to give you that nice blend of brightness but also keeping the mix or the master very pleasant
yeah so you can hear as we go into 16 and 20 we get that really nice top end error but i find
that the 12k notch here just does a nice thing with our vocals so i'm gonna leave that parked
nice little boost of three and a half db all good there on the low frequency
i especially love this 30 and 50 notch if you've got a low end heavy mix like
this one it does something really pleasant with those subs in addition to that we can
set the high pass filter just to make sure that we don't have a lot of mud and murk down there
and we're also going to activate the fat control so let's hear what that does
when i first started mixing i felt like eqs if they had the same frequency and the same
notches that they pretty much were going to do the same thing but this is a great example of
stuff that's going on behind the scenes that makes this an eq that really stands out as
mastering grade and definitely has some of the similar tones from the hardware that i've
really come to appreciate next up we have the hf compressor which i found is just the perfect
complement for the valid eq feeding that directly into this we can retain the brightness but we can
tame a lot of the harshness in our mix and just give us a little bit more impact uh with this
so i will say this one does sound different to me anyway than the hardware in the fact that
not only does this kind of soften and round things but with the auto gain and the mix
control when we blend that in it actually will give us more of an impact and more of a glued
sound as well i'm gonna bring the threshold up slowly until we're getting some attenuation
i'll adjust the crossover bring that back and we're going to activate the new listen control
to be able to monitor exactly what we're attenuating here with
on hfc
we get a nice taming of the snare we also get some rounding of some of those high-end symbols and
things the vocal and you can really doctor this and to attenuate whatever you want and as much
as you want we can dial that all the way back to 3k so we're getting a lot more of the control here
but the great thing about hfc is that what's going on behind the scenes makes this react
very differently across sources i would encourage you to experiment with this on drums
as well as vocals you know individual elements because it does a really unique thing last but
not least we have the stereo image module this is a foolproof way to get some of that 3d width
to your master but you don't introduce weird phasing that you can with some other plugins
so it's just a very easy way to do it this is based on mid-side processing
very easy to dial in very easy to get a nice result with it so let's turn that on we're going
to adjust the shuffle control and this is directly related to the cutoff in the space so we can you
know add weight or we can actually carve space here in the the stereo image so let's go ahead
and activate that and we'll introduce a little bit of space as well as a little bit of width here
some of the other imaging plugins i've used take a lot more work to get to what we just
heard with stereo image you could also hear that we can solo our sides or our stereo information
and then adjust this also making it much more easy to really focus that and dial it in
as intended all right so now that we've added each of the fusion modules
here i'm going to go ahead and disable them and then we will enable them one by one so that we
can hear what they're doing individually as well as collectively here for our mix
obviously i love using the hardware but there's times where i'm on the road i'm on my laptop and
i don't have that with me and i can't tell you how many times that's happened to me and i just was
like man i wish i could just put that fusion in my backpack but now with the plugins you know we have
something that is definitely capable on the same level again i'm not saying it's the same
but as you could hear the difference that these plug-ins make and the sound that they
impart is on the same level in terms of what we can do what we can add how we can enhance
and accentuate the the different elements in our mix also this is just on the stereo bus
we can have all this processing here just like i would have the fusion hardware on my stereo
buss but now i can also utilize these plugins throughout my mix on individual elements so i
would encourage you to experiment also just to mention that i did contribute presets that are
included in the factory bank for these plugins so if that's something that you are interested in
those are all there and those are based on the very same settings that i've been using in the
hardware for a long time i try to get those to sound as close as possible and to give you
a very similar result so i hope you enjoy those if you have any questions about the
ssl fusion plugins feel free to leave a comment below if you learn anything in the video please
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