Presets
> Outboard-EQ ships with 133 factory presets across four categories, plus a user library and a personal default slot.
Outboard-EQ ships with 133 factory presets across four categories, plus a user library and a personal default slot.
Categories
Open the Presets pill in the header to see four built-in categories plus your user library:
Instrument
Per-source starting points — kick, snare, percussion, vocals (lead / male / female), bass family, acoustic / electric / synth, pad, strings, brass, live drums, vocal stacks.
Mixing
Bus-processing presets — drum bus, vocal bus, synth bus, metal guitar bus, mix bus commit, smiley & glue, pop parallel, FX return, NY parallel smile, tribal toms.
Mastering
Genre-aware mastering presets — pop, rock, hip-hop, rap, EDM, trance, dance, classical, country, electronic, streaming, podcast, R&B, metal, lo-fi, jazz, reggae, DnB, ambient, vinyl, club, beats, festival — plus correction tools (de-esser, de-mud, low-end cleanup, de-harsh, tilt reference, pop centre M/S).
Character
Hardware-emulation presets — color box, bass drive, console tape, cassette / walkman, Neve console, SSL bus — each in Subtle, Classic, and Pushed variants.
User library
The User flyout shows your own saved presets, stored as XML in:
- Windows:
%APPDATA%\EQUILIBRIUM\UserPresets\ - macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/EQUILIBRIUM/UserPresets/
Save As…
Saves the current full plugin state as a new user preset. The filename is sanitized to be safe across operating systems.
Delete
Removes a user preset from the library.
Default slot
The Default slot is a special user preset that loads when you instantiate a new Outboard-EQ. Use it to set your personal "first impression" state — e.g. Y-range ±24 dB, spectrum on, K-meter scale on K-14.
Save as Default
Captures the current state as your default.
Load Default
Loads your default into the current instance.
Reset
Reverts to Outboard-EQ's factory default (clean curve, all stages off).
Default file location: %APPDATA%\EQUILIBRIUM\Default.xml (Windows) / ~/Library/Application Support/EQUILIBRIUM/Default.xml (macOS).
How preset apply works
Loading a preset writes every preset-stored parameter through the same gesture-wrapped path as a manual edit, so the DAW sees one clean undo step and one automation snapshot. The plugin internally suspends per-gesture history capture during the apply so it doesn't flood your undo stack.
Tips
- Start from a Mastering genre preset that matches your material — they're calibrated for typical streaming-loudness targets and make a solid first pass.
- Save your most-used starting state as the Default. New instances will open ready to work instead of clean.
- User presets are plain XML — they're version-controllable, shareable, and editable in any text editor if you need to surgically tweak a value.
See also
Undo, redo, A/B
> Every edit you make in Outboard-EQ is undoable — including multi-band gestures, preset loads, and macros. Two A/B slots let you compare different settings side-by-side; Copy moves the state between
Installation
> Outboard-EQ ships as a VST3 and CLAP plugin, delivered as a ZIP archive for Windows. There is no separate installer to run — you copy the two plugin files into your DAW's plugin folder yourself. This page tells you exactly where they go and what to do if your DAW can't find the plugin.