GRACE NOTES

It’s Saturday night! And you know what that means! Once again, you can be the life of the party, creating killer mashups from your killer playlist. The problem, of course, is Ted, who delusionally thinks his killer mashups are more killer than yours. But now you can resolve that issue once and for all. You can whip out your Braven Fuse portable mixer and show him who’s da bomb.

The Braven Fuse is a tiny, pocket-sized mixer. Now, as a recording engineer who’s accustomed to having a 48-channel mixing console at her fingertips, this seems a bit small. It is, but the Fuse is meant for quicker and dirtier mixing jobs, In particular, it allows anyone, anywhere, to mix two sources, both of which can be connected wirelessly via Bluetooth. And, the output can also be streamed wirelessly via Bluetooth to two speakers.

The Fuse has two inputs—for example, one can be for music from a phone, the other from a tablet. There are separate volume controls, a three-band equalizer and fader to smoothly crossfade from one source to the other. There are also two 3.5mm input jacks for non-Bluetooth connections, as well as a hardwired output and a headphone jack. Sound quality is just fine, with no added degradations; of course, Bluetooth can always have transmission issues.

The Fuse will run for up to 12 hours with its 1,200 mAh internal rechargeable battery and it retails for $99. Granted, this is a simple mixer—for example, it won’t control speeds so you can’t match beats per minute or add any other effects, but for basic mixing, it’s more than adequate. You can create some awesome mashups, find out who’s the best DJ, and then ultimately determine who has the best groove. (Not you, Ted.)

For me, the Fuse has a more specialized application. Invariably, when I’m listening to music with a group of friends, someone has a song on their phone that we just have to hear. Instead of having to switch sources back and forth, pairing and unpairing, two people can both be paired, and we can even switch one source to a third phone while listening to another. The music just keeps going, and everyone is an active part in making it happen. That’s pretty handy, and definitely puts the Braven Fuse on my invite list.(Sorry, not you, Ted.)