Using Presets in Alloy
Alloy’s presets are designed to give you a quick starting point for your own projects.
Every track is different so no one preset will always work well for your audio. However we have attempted to provide a wide range of presets that will help you find a good starting point for your own material. By starting with a preset and tweaking the available controls in Alloy’s Macro window, you’ll be able to make Alloy more closely fit the session you’re working on. If you want more advanced control of any of Alloy’s modules, you can go deeper by clicking on any of the module selection buttons at the bottom of the interface to get to even more controls.
Presets can take you a long way, but learning how each of Alloy’s modules works is the key to getting the best results.
Setting Your Input Level
Setting the input level in Alloy can make a huge difference in how the dynamics modules in Alloy behave. Setting your input level is important when selecting presets as the presets will sound drastically different if your input level is too loud or quiet.
To begin, we recommend setting Alloy’s input level so that the input meter is peaking in the yellow area of the meter to insure that you have a good neutral level as a starting point.
Choosing a Starting Point
Start by listening through several of Alloy’s presets. We’ve organized presets into categories that will let you search easily for presets for every purpose. Because every mix is different, we’ve aimed to give you a lot of starting points so that you can choose the best one for your project. When you’ve found one that sounds like it has what your track needs, you can start tweaking that preset to your liking.
MacroPresets and MacroFaders
MacroPresets aim to put the most useful controls at your fingertips. When you load a preset in Alloy, you’ll find the most useful controls for that preset in the Alloy’s Macro window. This window may also include additional sliders called MacroFaders. These special sliders are designed to help you quickly adjust key parts of the preset’s sound by automatically controlling deeper controls in Alloy, and are often tied to multiple controls behind the scenes. For example some presets have MacroFaders named Shine, Loudness, or Warmth. A MacroFader named “Shine” might adjust the Exciter while also affecting the EQ for example. These can be useful for adjusting how dramatically Alloy affects your track or bus by moving just a few simple controls.