Where does iTunes store the custom EQ settings on my hard drive? (OSX 10.6)

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Level 1

55 points

Where does iTunes store the custom EQ settings on my hard drive? (OSX 10.6)

Bought a new Mac. I moved over my iTunes library via export and then import. The songs are on an external drive. Everything went perfectly... except for my custom EQ settings.

The songs still have the custom EQs, but the equalizer itself doesn't have those settings anymore.

For example: for quiet songs, I have a custom EQ called "+6" that boosts the overall volume by 6db (far left EQ slider). If I click Get Info on a song with that custom EQ, I can see that it's still there (in the song's info, I mean), but the EQ itself is missing all of my custom EQs.

I have a full backup of my previous hard drive (not to mention that I still have the old Mac). Where can I find those EQ settings? Surely they're in a file somewhere, right?

2.53 ghz Mac Mini, 4 gigs of RAM., Mac OS X (10.6.2), I heart my Apogee Duet.

Posted on Jan 11, 2010 11:10 AM

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Answer 1

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Jan 11, 2010 11:55 AM in response to Jalpuna

Yes, you can just create them again.

You could open the plist file and see what's in it and copy just the EQ settings from one to the other.

Here's a plist editor -> http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/prefsetter.html

ALWAYS work on a copy and keep a copy of the original somewhere else (like the desktop).

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Answer 2

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Jan 11, 2010 11:32 AM in response to Jalpuna

Sorry, I missed this...

"The songs still have the custom EQs, but the equalizer itself doesn't have those settings anymore."

I believe the EQ is stored in iTunes prefs in ~>Library>Preferences>com.apple.iTunes.plist file

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Answer 3

Jalpuna Author

Level 1

55 points

Jan 11, 2010 11:37 AM in response to Jalpuna

Ah, to heck with it. Who knows what else is stored in that file, and the last thing I want to do is screw up my library somehow on the new Mac (I've been using it for a few days now). I'll just recreate the custom EQs.

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Answer 4

Jan 11, 2013 8:29 PM in response to Jalpuna

Curious. Thank you for pointing me to the ~/Library/Prefences folder. Inside I see the /com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist.

I was running 10.6.8. I've just upgraded to 10.8.2.

I copied this file from my backup to the new 10.8 Mac (iTunes 11.0.1) and after re-opening iTunes, all saved EQ settings were restored, and all assigned EQ settings to songs were also restored. Perhaps this is a new feature of iTunes 11? Very nice!

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Answer 5

hodiday

Level 1

0 points

Feb 17, 2013 3:02 PM in response to Jalpuna

I have just upgraded to 10.8.2 with iTunes 11.0.1, however i cant find ~>Library>Preferences>com.apple.iTunes.plist in my old HDD.

Also com.apple.iTunes.plist search returns no results. I was using iTunes 11.0.1 in my previous mac as well. Is there any other file i should check? I dont want to loose my 20+ presets created 😟

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Answer 6

edwardjc

Level 1

9 points

Mar 11, 2013 1:58 AM in response to Jalpuna

The last time I did a clean install of Windows on my PC, I backed up the entire iTunes folder on a separate HD partition. After reinstalling iTunes, I copied the iTunes folder back to the C drive and all of the many EQ presets I had created were restored, along with the music. That was in late 2011. I came to the conclusion that this was how you back up the custom EQ settings.

I guess I made a mistake by assuming it would work again this time. Did I? I repeated the process today when I reinstalled Windows, and all the presets I had created did not get restored and now seem to be gone... Is there any way to recover them?

I spent a lot of time tweaking the different frequencies to get them just right and hope to not have to repeat that process.

All of the settings were created using the custom presets, and not on individual MP3 tracks themselves.

(iTunes version just installed: 11.0.2.26)

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Answer 7

Jan 21, 2014 12:58 PM in response to Jalpuna

Hey, I had the same problem as you. So I did a little research on this and there is a file in:

User\Library\Preferences

The name of the the file is:

com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist

That should be the file for the equalizer settings and stuff

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Answer 8

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Jan 21, 2014 1:09 PM in response to DageTheEbil

DageTheEbil wrote:

Hey, I had the same problem as you. So I did a little research on this and there is a file in:

User\Library\Preferences

I too did some research and posted the same info over 4 years ago in this very same thread, 9 posts up.

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Answer 9

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Jan 11, 2010 11:15 AM in response to Jalpuna

Bought a new Mac. I moved over my iTunes library via export and then import

Just copy the entire \Music\iTunes\ folder and everything will copy over.

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Answer 10

Jalpuna Author

Level 1

55 points

Jan 11, 2010 11:19 AM in response to Chris CA

"Just copy the entire \Music\iTunes\ folder and everything will copy over."

I did that. Everything copied over EXCEPT for the custom EQs. Thus, my question: where can I find them?

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Answer 11

edwardjc

Level 1

9 points

Mar 11, 2013 1:59 AM in response to hodiday

-meant to reply to original question (trying to delete this reply but I don't see an option to do that)-

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Answer 12

edwardjc

Level 1

9 points

Mar 11, 2013 2:00 AM in response to edwardjc

Does anyone know if there's a thread like this one for PC users? Obviously if there is that's where my question should go...

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