I was previously using Strawberry 1.1.3 from the PPA and the equalizer worked.

I read here https://forum.strawberrymusicplayer.org/topic/555/how-to-enable-the-equalizer-on-linux-mint/4?_=1792006397295 that "the equalizer is only available with gstreamer". I can see that in the 1.2.31 version I cannot pick gstreamer in the backend while on the 1.1.3 version gstreamer is selected automatically.

It says in the linked thread to compiled strawberry with gstreamer... are there instructions? 'cause idk how to do that. Any workaround perhaps?