FX Chain Preset location on MacOS

nebulon5 · January 11, 2023, 10:55pm

I’m really ashamed to be asking this, but I can’t for the life of me find it-

I’m looking for the folder on MacOS (I’m new to Mac) where the Track Presets and FX Chain Presets are stored. Yunno, where you can load em up and it puts all plugins in place for you on a track.

I have a BUUUUNCH from my Windows machine that I’d like to migrate over to this new Mac, and I’m having trouble locating it. I’ve searched for this here in the forum but can’t seem to find a straight answer.

I’m on Cubase 12, MacOS Monterrey.

Thanks guys!

steve · January 11, 2023, 11:02pm

Check out these search results for
folder on MacOS where the Track Presets and FX Chain Presets are stored

nebulon5 · January 11, 2023, 11:09pm

I checked this folder on my Mac, but there’s nothing in there! Not even a folder that says “FX Chain Presets”.

Unless… its because I haven’t made any there yet?

nebulon5 · January 11, 2023, 11:10pm

I’m going to try throwing that Fx Chain Preset folder from my windows machine in there, and see what happens.

nebulon5 · January 11, 2023, 11:53pm

Yep, that location on that link is definitely incorrect. I created a new FX Chain Preset from within Cubase, and it didn’t end up there. After I created the preset, I then did a search for it on my entire Mac, and it’s STILL searching for it (this is like 10 minutes ago).

Any other clues on this?

steve · January 12, 2023, 12:15am

Hm. I don’t have a modern Mac, but have a look in ~/Library/Steinberg/ that’s where they are in my old install

Any luck?

nebulon5 · January 12, 2023, 2:15am

No such folder. I’ll keep looking. It’s GOTTA be here somewhere.

nebulon5 · January 12, 2023, 2:49am

GOT IT!

The f*#@ing folder was HIDDEN. You have to pull up a Mac Terminal, and execute the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
[press enter]
killall Finder
[press enter]

and then leave Terminal. Then, navigate to Users/*yourusername/Library/Audio/Steinberg/FX Chain Presets
… and there they are.

If after you’re done, you want to RE-HIDE all the hidden folders, pull up Terminal again and execute:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
[press enter]
killall Finder
[press enter]

I, for one, am going to leave them all unhidden from now on following this debacle.

Thanks for your help!

steve · January 12, 2023, 6:54am

You mean ~/Library/ was hidden? Or Macinstosh HD/Library? Which folder had the presets folders?

by the way, for future reference about the hidden Library folder, see: show /library mac - Google Search

ramirezescudero · September 29, 2023, 8:36am

Dude. No need to be ashamed! We’ll all in this together! I’ve been using Cubase for 15 years and have found out just now and it’s quite simple.
I’m on Mac OS Big Sur (Intel chip) but I’m sure this works the same for Windows.

So what you have to do is the following:

Open Cubase on your previous installation (in Mac you can do this by using your old system hard drive as a Startup Disk):
Go to any track in the mixer.
Right click and select Save Track Preset.
You will find listed all previous Track Presets you may have saved.
Right click any of the presets and on the third option available, you will see Reveal in Finder.
Click on that, and hey presto, that’s where the folder with all your presets are. Save the whole folder somewhere.
On your new Cubase installation do the same from steps 2-6 and paste into that folder your previous presets.
Restart Cubase and it’s done, you now have imported your previous track presets. By the way, the same applies for VST Plugins, although each preset is put into subfolders according to the VST Plugin you saved the preset in.

Hope that helps.

emiemi · November 19, 2023, 2:40am

as steve mentioned, you could’ve also just hold the option key within the finder-menu “go” to access files within the ~/Library. Bit easier…