How to install a Serum 2 preset bank, and what to do when it does not work

A Serum preset bank is a folder of small files that you drop into one specific place. The install takes a minute. What takes the evening is one of three problems, and each has a clear cause.

Where the files go

Serum keeps everything in one user folder, and the presets live in a subfolder of it. You do not have to guess where that folder is, because Serum will tell you.

1. Open Serum on any track.
2. Open the menu at the top of the preset browser.
3. Choose the option that opens the presets folder in Finder or Explorer.

That folder is the destination. Copy the bank's folder into it whole, keeping the folder name: that is what groups the presets together in the browser instead of scattering them among everything else you own.

Then click the refresh option in the same menu, or close and reopen the plug-in. Serum reads the folder when it starts, so a bank added while it is open will not appear until you tell it to look again.

Problem one: the presets are not there

Almost always the refresh. Close the plug-in window, reopen it, and look again.

If they are still missing, you probably copied the presets into the wrong subfolder. Serum's user folder has several: presets, wavetables, noises, LFO shapes. Preset files belong in the presets folder, nothing else.

Problem two: they load but make no sound, or the wrong sound

This is the one that costs people the most time, and it is not your fault.

When a preset is built on a custom wavetable, Serum stores the path to that wavetable, not the wavetable itself, unless the maker ticked Embed in Preset. On your machine that path leads nowhere, so the oscillator falls back to a default and the sound collapses.

If the pack came with a separate wavetables folder, that folder has to go into Serum's wavetables folder, and you have to refresh again. If it did not come with one, the presets were sold broken.

We wrote this one up separately: why Serum presets sometimes open empty.

Problem three: nothing opens at all

Check the version. Serum 2 presets do not open in Serum 1. They are not the same format and there is no converter. If a pack does not say which version it targets, assume it targets the newer one and check before buying.

Serum 1 presets do open in Serum 2, so the incompatibility only runs one way.

A habit worth having

Keep the original download. Not the extracted folder, the archive. When you change machine, reinstall the operating system, or discover a year later that half a bank is missing, the archive is the only thing that lets you start again.

The short version

• Let Serum show you its own folder rather than hunting for it.
• Copy the whole bank folder in, keep its name, then refresh.
• No sound usually means a missing wavetable, not a broken file.
• Nothing opening usually means Serum 1 trying to read Serum 2.