Where are my own EQ curves saved?

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

(macOS 10.15.6 on Macbook Air 2020. Audacity 2.4.2)

Ok, actually I know the answer, because I did a bit of my own snooping.

Turns out the new experimental EQ curves I created yesterday are not saved in the EQcurves.xml file like I was lead to believe, but rather they’re happily hangin’ out in pluginsettings.cfg.
WTF?

This maybe partially explains why I have been unsuccessful in installing the last compiled xml file by user “Kragoth” in 2019.

I thought I followed the directions on the wiki, but nothin’.

2

Older versions of Audacity used the EQcurves.xml files, but the old EQ effect did not support Macros. It was updated in line with other effects a couple of years a go to use the pluginsettings.cfg and now supports Macros.

Audacity 2.4.2 ships with an XML-to-TXT converter (disabled by default) which converts old XML format settings to the new TXT format. See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/eq_xml_to_txt_converter.html


Do you have a link for that? Parts of the wiki are very old, so it may well need updating.

3

No problem. Scroll down to 2nd yellow box. They’re not what I’d call exhaustive directions, but if they’re out of date, that’d be moot anyway. :wink:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/graphic_eq.html

4

That appears to be up to date.

5

Sigh. So I just did it wrong. Not sure it would be any less of a waste of time to try many many existing imported curves, than twiddling my own.

I’m still confused why my own EQ curves ended up where they did.

6

If you’d like to attach one of your XML files, I can check that it converts correctly.
See here for how to attach a file to a forum post: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1

7

Thanks.
Basically what I did was download the file mentioned here: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/podcast-difficulty/297/1

placed it into the same folder as my existing EQcurves.xml file, renamed the ‘old’ one, and then renamed the new one as EQCurves.xml.

Then I thought I properly used the XML to TXT converter like the yellow box specified. I then closed & restarted Audacity. But I didn’t see any new effects listed under “Manage” (in the Graphic EQ dialog box).
EQCurves (Kragoth mid 2019 compilation).xml (215 KB)

8

(I never created a new XML file directly – I just twiddled the sliders in the effect dialog box, and saved several different ones. It ended up in the config file previously mentioned. Until I downloaded the new XML file from this forum as referenced above, I only had the one that must have been part of the original installation of Audacity. I renamed the old one, as one does, and renamed the new one with the old one’s name.)

9

Do you still have a copy of your old “EQCurves.xml” file? If you do, please post that.

10

(thanks)
EQCurves backup.xml (9.17 KB)

11

There’s just one curve in that file, which was the last used curve.

Here’s two versions of that curve, one for the Graphic EQ effect and one for the Filter Curve EQ effect:
GraphicEq.txt (8.08 KB)
FilterCurve.txt (8.08 KB)
To import the curve in either effect, click on the “Manage” button, then “Import”, then select the appropriate TXT file.
Note that the imported curve is NOT automatically saved as a new preset. If you want to retain it you need to “Manage button > Save Preset” and give it a name.

12

Oh! So the curves that I have named go in that pluginsettings.cfg file?

13

In the current version of Audacity, yes they do.

In Audacity 2.3.2 and earlier they went into the “EQCurves.xml” file.