Listening Profiles

A listening profile is a named preset that groups all your plugin settings for a particular scenario — headphone listening, desktop speakers, late-night low volume, home theater, etc. Profiles let you switch your entire audio setup in seconds.

Common Profile Examples

Profile	Typical plugin chain
Headphones	EQ (Harman target) → Crossfeed → Loudness Compensation
Desktop Speakers	Room EQ → Gain
Late Night	Loudness Compensation (boosted) → Limiter
Home Theater	Room EQ → Upmixer → Gain
Flat / Bypass	Gain (0 dB)

Creating a Profile

1. Set up your plugin chain for the scenario you want to save
2. Open the Plugins screen (Terminal) or Plugin Rack (Desktop)
3. Save the current chain as a preset file — use a descriptive name:

   headphones-hifiman-he400se.json
   speakers-kef-r3-room-eq.json
   late-night.json

See the Plugin Presets guide for detailed save/load instructions.

Switching Profiles

Terminal

Press l on the Plugins screen to open the load dialog and navigate to any preset file. The switch takes effect immediately with no audio interruption (SotF cross-fades between chains).

Desktop

Use Import → Load Preset from the Plugin Rack, or set up keyboard shortcuts for frequently used presets in Settings.

macOS System-Wide (Daemon)

If you use the HAL driver for system-wide audio, you can switch presets from the menubar app without restarting anything. The daemon hot-reloads the new plugin chain.

Organizing Profile Files

SotF doesn’t enforce a directory structure, but a consistent layout helps:

~/.config/sotf/presets/
  headphones/
    hifiman-he400se-harman.json
    beyerdynamic-dt1990-bright.json
  speakers/
    kef-r3-room-eq.json
    flat.json
  scenarios/
    late-night.json
    home-theater.json

Automating Profile Switches

On macOS, you can trigger profile switches via the daemon’s SIGHUP reload:

# Switch to home theater profile
cp ~/.config/sotf/presets/scenarios/home-theater.json ~/.config/sotf/active.json
kill -HUP $(pgrep sotf-daemon)

Wrap this in a shell script or bind it to a keyboard shortcut with Automator/BetterTouchTool.

Tips

• Start from a working chain — build each profile incrementally and verify it sounds right before saving
• Keep a flat profile — useful for A/B comparison and debugging
• Document your profiles — add a comment field in the JSON (SotF ignores unknown fields) explaining what each profile is optimized for