Originally Posted by en5ca ➡️

Hi! Is anyone having problems with stereo level matching of the SSL Fusion?

Manual states stereo matching should be better than 0.01 dB. When Vintage Drive is engaged, it should better than 0.25 dB.

My measuring accuracy is 0.1 dB.

When bypassed, the left and right channel levels match perfectly with +4 dBu 1kHz test signal.

When I disengage the bypass (basically enable the processing), but don't enable any of the modules, the levels still match almost perfectly. At unity levels.

But when I start to adjust input and/or output trims, I start to get static level 'tilt' towards left channel of about 0.3 dBs. Without any modules engaged.

If I enable the Vintage Drive, this gets worse, and results in ~0.6 dBs tilt towards left channel, and this starts to become clearly audible.

With music material, things gets even more uneven, resulting in about ~1 dBs of peak and RMS tilt towards left channel. With mono or stereo source material.

We returned the unit to the retailer, who measured and confirmed this. But now the replacement unit shows exactly the same kind of behaviour. Is it possible that we got a faulty unit, and the replacement unit, from a 'bad batch' or is this just a feature of the SSL Fusion, and therefore something we have to measure and compensate with 3rd party processing, as SSL Fusion doens't have channel trims?

Originally Posted by drainyoo ➡️

How did you end up solving or adjusting for this? I’m experiencing the same thing, left channel level is slightly lower. The issue compounded when I run the signal through more gear after the Fusion the point where I’m getting a -0.6dB difference by the time it gets into my DAW. If this is the nature of the unit, how can I adjust? I have RN542s at the end of my chain. Can I simply add a a little gain in the left?

Originally Posted by dariva ➡️

Here, the EQ section actually introduces most of the volume mismatch. But it may vary from day to day. I don't worry too much about it and compensate on the way in my UR824 interface.

Originally Posted by drainyoo ➡️

I wonder if there's a plugin that can easily do this that I can slap onto my mixdown Aux track in my DAW.

Originally Posted by dariva ➡️

So, I've been reading about gain staging with hardware a lot....and I realized yesterday that I haven't been really paying attention to it that much.

I've been hitting the Fusion with a pretty hot signal, and on top of it, pushing the Drive section into the orange and occasionally the red for that "aggressive analog sound".... This would benefit drums and distorted guitars, but would eat the low mids out of the vocals and make them thin - which now I realize is the effect of too much harmonics.

Yesterday, I attenuated the send with about 10 db and kept the Drive in the green. Now this was a revelation - I started appreciating the sound of this box a lot more.

Now I'll go and rediscover my other hardware.

What input and output levels are peeps here using with this gem? Somebody mentioned a set-and-forget setting - let's share those!

For me, it might be Drive and Density at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. respectively - a bit like the 1176 classic attack/release knobs positions. Also, the stereo section engaged in 90% of the cases - I seem to loose a bit of width when going through the AD/DA loop, so this compensates. The transformer is rarely usable. The HF comp is gold.