Loading presets

FabFilter Pro-Q 3 comes with a small set of basic presets, giving a good idea of what you can do.

• To load a preset, click the preset button. The presets menu will appear with all available presets. Click a menu item to load that preset. The currently selected preset is highlighted with check marks.
• To explore the presets one by one, click on the little arrow buttons to the left and right of the main preset button. This will load the previous or next preset in the menu.

The preset button shows the name of the current preset. If you have changed the preset by adjusting one or more parameters, the name is dimmed to indicate that this is not the original preset anymore.

Tips

• The Default Setting preset is loaded automatically when FabFilter Pro-Q 3 is started. To change the default settings, simply overwrite this preset by clicking Options > Save As Default in the presets menu.
• To open a preset outside the presets folder, click Options > Open Other Preset. This might be useful if someone sends you a preset by email, for example.
• If somehow the factory presets are lost or not installed properly, click Options > Restore Factory Presets in the preset menu to restore them.

MIDI Program Change and Bank Select

Loading a presets can also be done via MIDI, using Bank Select and Program Change messages. Click Options > Enable MIDI Program Changes in the preset menu to enable or disable this feature. When enabled, the corresponding bank/program numbers are shown in front of the preset name (for example: (0/65) My Preset). This means that you can load that preset by first sending a Bank Select message to select bank 0 and then sending a Program Change message to select program 65.

Important: All the presets in your preset folder are numbered automatically, starting with bank 0 and program 0. This way, you are able to access any of the presets via MIDI. However, this also means that when you add new presets to the menu, bank/program numbers of other presets might change. Be aware of this when recording program changes in a session! We recommend to create a dedicated folder in your presets folder for your program changes, and name it with two leading underscores (e.g. "__Programs") to ensure it's the first folder in your preset collection and the presets in this folder start with bank 0 and program 0.

Working with Pro Tools control surfaces

FabFilter Pro-Q 3 supports the most important Pro Tools hardware control surfaces, such as Avid ICON D-Control and D-Command. Because you need a fixed number of bands in Pro-Q to use this effectively, we have added a Flat 7 Bands factory preset that can be used as your personal default preset. To set this preset as FabFilter Pro-Q's startup setting, load it once and then choose Options > Save As Default in the presets menu.

Next: Saving presets

See Also
Using on iOS
Overview