How To Install Serum Presets & Preset Folder Location

Are you an electronic music producer looking to enhance your sound with custom Serum presets, but finding the installation process a bit perplexing? You’re not alone!

Installing Serum presets can be a tricky endeavor for beginners and even experienced producers. The pain points often revolve around navigating through unfamiliar folders, dealing with compressed files, and ensuring that Serum recognizes your newly added presets.

In this guide, we’ll explain the process of installing Serum presets, provide you with the exact folder locations for both Mac and PC users, and walk you through each step.

Key Takeaways

• Easy Serum Preset Installation: Unzip presets, find Serum folder, drag & drop, and rescan for a hassle-free experience.
• Wavetable Integration: Download, unzip, locate “tables” folder, and rescan to seamlessly add custom wavetables to Serum.
• Skin Customization: Similar process applies for skins, with the added ability to switch skins within Serum.
• Troubleshooting Tips: Resolve issues related to folder locations, permissions, and external drives for a smooth experience.

How Do I Add Presets To Serum?

Here’s how you can install Serum presets (quick guide):

• Download your Serum presets.
• Right click and extract all (Windows), or double click the file (Mac).
• Navigate to your Serum presets folder, by clicking “menu”, then “show serum presets folder.
• Drag your downloaded presets into this folder.
• Rescan folders on disk, or open and close your DAW.

So you wanna know how to install Serum presets? In this article we’re going to cover everything you need to know when installing new Serum presets, wavetables, & even skins!

Download The Preset Pack

Firstly you’ll want to grab a Serum preset pack. Check out our free Lo-Fi Sample Pack, that comes with Serum presets – Purple Slush Zero.

Unzip The Serum Presets

Once you’ve downloaded your Serum presets, you’ll notice that they usually come as a .zip or .rar file. These allow the files to be smaller to download, and, as a result, quicker to download.

To access the files inside, you’ll need to unzip them.

If you’re using Mac you just need to double click the zip file, and it will start unpacking for you.

On Windows, simply right click & select “Extract all“, and it will begin the process.

If you have WinRar installed (an unzipping program), you right click and select “Extract Here”. WinRar is generally better for handling zip files over the Windows 10 built-in stuff.

Also a lot of Windows users tend to use .rar files and these can only be opened using WinRar on Windows.

Where Do Serum Presets Go? Finding The Serum Presets Folder

Now you have your files unzipped, you need to put them in the right directory, so they can show up inside Serum.

To find this, open up an instance of Serum inside your DAW, click “menu” in the top right corner, then navigate to “show serum presets folder”.

This will open up a new folder window, then you navigate to the “presets” sub folder, then the “user” sub folder.

Now you can drag and drop your presets folder over here.

Rescan Presets Folder

Then you want to head back to the “menu” option in Serum, click it, then navigate down to “Rescan folders on disk”.

This will rescan your preset folders allowing Serum to find the new presets you just installed.

Now all you have to do is check your Serum preset browser, hover over “user”, and you will see your new presets show up!

How To Install Wavetables in Serum

Step 1 – Download Your Custom Wavetables

Find a Wavetable pack you want to install inside of Serum. I’m going to use our, organic orange sorbet wavetable pack (made out of deliciously organic foley).

Download it to your computer wherever you like, but remember you’ve got to find it.

Playing hide and seek with your computer files isn’t fun.

Step 2 – Unzip Your Wavetable Pack

Like with the Serum presets above, you’re gonna have to unzip them.

On Mac because lord Steve Jobs made everything easy for the price of 2 computers, you just gotta double click the file.

On Windows, you gotta go a step further, which is not optimal broducer workflow. Right click on the zip file, then select “Extract All”

If the pack is a .rar, you may also need to install some 3rd party software. WinRar is best.

Step 3 – Find Serum’s Wavetable Folder

Now your files are unzipped, you need to find the wavetable folder. This is pretty much the same process as finding the presets folder, but you’re going to click a different folder called “tables”.

So open up an instance of Serum in your DAW, click “menu” (top right), then navigate to “show serum presets folder”.

This will open up an explorer window on your computer. You’ll want to go to the “tables” folder, instead of the “presets” folder this time.

Then you’re going to drag that extracted folder into the tables folder.

Step 4 – Rescan Wavetables

Once your wavetables are inside your “tables” folder, they won’t automatically show up inside Serum, unless you rescan.

To do this, you want to go back to the “menu” option, at the top right of Serum. Select this, then navigate to “rescan folders on disk”.

Once you have done this, you will be able to use your new wavetables in the same way you would use the normal wavetables on Serum.

How To Install Serum Skins

This is virtually the same process as the above. Instead, you’ll want to navigate to the “skins” folder.

You’ll then take your extracted files, and drag and drop them into this folder.

Then rescan the folders inside Serum.

To change your skin, you’ll want to click the top left “Serum” logo. This will open up a navigation window you can use to change your skin to the new skin you installed.

Click the desired skin, then start using Serum!

FAQ

Summary

To recap:

1. Download your Serum presets
2. Unzip them using your native program or WinRar
3. Navigate to your Serum presets folder, by clicking “menu”, then “show serum presets folder”.
4. Drag them in this folder to install the Serum presets.
5. Rescan your folders, or open and close your DAW.
6. Voila!