SPITFIRE AUDIO DARKSTAR Haunted House User Manual

USER MANUALDARKSTARHAUNTED HOUSE

SPITFIRE AUDIO

INTRODUCTION

Immerse yourself in the unique sound world of electronic duo Darkstar — processed analog synth textures and loops, rich sub-basses, pitched-down drums, and icy, warped vocals, each layered with subliminal spectral echoes of rave culture and industrial white noise — ghosts in the machine,  leading in and fading out.From dark and ominous, to warm, heartfelt nostalgia, each sound is full of character and emotion, designed to create tension, depth, and atmosphere for any setting — from contemporary electronic music to hybrid, modern film, TV & game composition. Presented in our award-winning, easy-to-use dedicated plug-in, this versatile tool offers a range of controls and effects,  o you can immediately transform each preset to facilitate your own vision.

QUICK SPECS

MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.10 or laterMinimum: 2.8GHz i5 (quad-core), 8GB RAMRecommended: 2.8GHz i7 (six-core), 16GB RAM

PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTSWindows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 64-bit)Minimum: Intel Core 2.8GHz i5 (quad-core) orAMD Ryzen 5, 8GB RAMRecommended: Intel 2.8GHzi7 (six-core) or AMD R7 2700, 16GB RAM• Dedicated plugin (AU, VST2, VST3, AAX)

DOWNLOADING & INSTALLING

Thank you for buying Haunted House. If you are a total newbie to this kind of thing you can get up to speed here: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/about/

First, though, grab the ‘Spitfire Audio App’ from this link, this app will enable you to download the library: http://www.spitfireaudio.com/info/library-manager/

THE SPITFIRE AUDIO APPWhen you launch the app you will be prompted to log in using the same details you use at our site. Then you’ll see the page pictured below: 

  1. TABS the default tab is My Products, which shows all of the libraries on your Spitfire  Account. Downloads will show currently downloading products.
  2. FILTERS Clicking these filters will quickly display products that are not installed, those already installed, and any available updates. Clicking again will remove the filter.
  3. LIBRARY All libraries and plugins will appear with their artwork on the My Products tab. Clicking this artwork will open the product page.
  4. INSTALL/UPDATE buttons allow you to quickly start a download directly from the MyProducts tab, instead of clicking through to the Library. Next to the button, the size of the download is shown.

THE SPITFIRE APP PREFERENCE

If this is your first time using the Spitfire Audio App for a download you may wish to first navigate to the Settings tab. Here you can set the Default Content location for where you wish to download your libraries. You can also you can set the default VST2 to install location to the folder where your DAW expects to find VST files.Here you can also enable Auto Login to save time in the future. 

Once you are happy with your preferences, simply click the Install button for the library. This is either directly on the My Products tab under the library artwork, or it can be found by clicking on the library image and clicking the install button on the page that appears.

Clicking either of these will prompt you for a location, the default content location in your preferences will be suggested but you can select any suitable location. If installing from a hard drive, ensure that you choose the drive as the location.

After clicking install you will be directed to the Downloads tab where you can watch the progress if you like. You can, of course, leave the Downloads tab and start other downloads but at this point, you should leave the Spitfire App open until the download completes.

DARKSTAR – Haunted House USER MANUAL

THE DEDICATED PLUGIN

Unlike other Spitfire libraries, you don’t need Kontakt Player or the full Kontakt to run this library. Haunted House is contained within its own plugin, built for VST, AU, and AAX. Once you have completed the installation, you are ready to go!

LOGIC PRO X

  • On a fresh project, a track dialogue box will automatically pop up
  • Choose ‘Software Instrument’, and then look beneath the ‘Instrument’ dropdown
  • Select AU Instruments > SPITFIRE AUDIO > Haunted House.

CUBASE

  • Right-click the track window and choose ‘Add Instrument Track’
  • Underneath the ‘Instrument’ dropdown, choose Haunted House
  • Select ‘Add Track’

PRO TOOLS

  • Go to the ‘Track’ menu at the top of the screen, and select ‘New’
  • In the pop-up, select Stereo and Instrument Track, and press ‘Create’
  • In the first Insert slot, select multichannel plug-in and ‘Instrument’
  • You should see Haunted House available as an option

HAVE A LOOK AROUND

THE HAUNTED HOUSE INTERFACE

OPENING YOUR FIRST PRESETS

When you first open Haunted House, this is what you will see. The default preset that loads is “Sub low LDN 1”.

  1. TOP MENU
  2. PRESET SELECTOR
  3. MAIN CONTROLS
  4. KEYBOARD PANEL

PRESET SELECTOR

  1. PRESET NAMEHere you can see the currently selected preset.
  2. FILTERSClick on a filter to only show those presets.The filters are subtractive, so selecting “FX” will show you only the FX presets.Click the “Clear” button to return to a view of all presets.
  3. INSTRUMENT GROUPAs you scroll through the available presets, the instrument group is displayed here.
  4. STARClick here to favorite your presets. Once “Starred” they show in the “Star” filter.
  5. PREVIEWPlayback a short example of the preset without having to load it! Enormously helpful when choosing a sound.
  6. INFORMATIONHover over on the “i” icon to see some information about the preset.
  7. NEXT, PREVIOUS, AND SAVE With the presets view collapsed, you willbe able to see the Next, Previous, and Save icons. Next and Previous will simply send you to the next available preset – if you have a filter enabled, you will scroll through the filtered set of presets. Save allows you to save your own preset, click save, name the preset and it will appear under the “user” filter.
  8. SCROLLDrag up and down to see more presets.
  9. LOADSelect a preset and then press “load” (or double-click the preset).

MAIN CONTROLS

  1. VOLUMEOften referred to as “Expression” in our Kontakt Libraries, this is a simple level control for you to adjust along with…
  2. DYNAMICSUse in conjunction with the volume to make your performances sound so much more musical than before!
  3. KNOBThe configurable knob allows you to control any of the other available parameters for the particular preset.Hover over the knob and it will turn purple.3.1 CLICK: Click and you will be able to see all available controls for a particular preset.Haunted House features 7 additional controls the Knob Control depending on the patch.Attack, Release, Reverb, Delay, Stretch, and Flanger.These are given artistic names, but can always be referenced in the bottom leftcorner of the plugin when hovered over if need be.ATT4CK (Attack) – Adjust the attack of the amplitude envelope.REL34SE (Release) – Allows you to change the amount of release trigger audible. This only applies to long techniques.
  4.  ETERNITY (Reverb) – This control adjusts the amount of reverb that’s added.REP 4 ME (Delay) – This controls the amount of delay being added.R LUV BOO (Stretch) – Controls the speed of the sample playback.MIST N FLEX (Flanger) – Controls the amount  of flanger being added.

TOP MENU

  1. LEDShows when an instrument is loaded by lighting solid green. If this is flashing, your instrument is not fully loaded yet.
  2. CPU METERAn indication of how much your CPU is being taxed, the green flash next to the CPU meter will turn red when you are overloading it.
  3. DISK METERHow hard are you taxing your hard drive? If this is close to, or going over 100% it’s time to consider a faster drive. See the next page for settings that can help get the most out of a slower drive.
  4. MEMORYThis shows how much RAM you are currently using in this instance of Haunted House. While the preset is loading, this will show the instrument loading into memory.
  5. VOICESShows how many voices are being used at any one time.
  6. REFRESHRefresh the instrument, alt-click to refresh the whole plug-in. This can be useful if you have hanging MIDI notes or have moved samples in your file system. Right-click this for additional options, such as switching all instances to a different model.
  7. REVERB TYPESelect which type of Reverb you would like to be active, chosing from Plate, Hall, and Room.
  8. MIDI CHSet the MIDI channel that will control the instrument here. If in doubt select “all” so that the instrument will react to any incoming MIDI messages.
  9. TUNEMove this knob to tune in semitone increments, shift-click to move in increments of 0.01 of a semitone. Alt-click to reset to default.
  10. PANPan the whole plug-in left and right in the stereo field. Alt-click to reset to center.
  11. VOLUMEControl the overall volume of the instrument.
  12. PLUGIN SETTINGSJ. MAXIMUM VOICES — Enter the maximum number of voices that can play at once. More voices = More CPU and memory used.K. PRELOAD SIZE — The minimum number of sample values preloaded into memory for each audio recording. Increase for slower hard drives. Default is 12888.L. STREAM BUFFER SIZE — The number of sample values kept in memory for each audio recording stream at any time. Increase for slower hard drives. Default is 65536.M. MASTER TUNING— Choose a preset that you wish the plug in to load by default on launch

APPENDIX A — FAQS AND TROUBLESHOOTING

Q: WHAT ARE THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS?

MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.10 or laterMinimum: 2.8GHz i5 (quad-core), 8GB RAMRecommended: 2.8GHz i7 (six-core), 16GB RAM

PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTSWindows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latestService Pack, 64-bit)

Minimum: Intel Core 2.8GHz i5 (quad-core) orAMD Ryzen 5, 8GB RAM

Recommended: Intel 2.8GHzi7 (six-core) orAMD R7 2700, 16GB RAM

Q: I WANT TO RESET THE PLUGIN SETTINGS TO THE DEFAULTYou can delete the .settings file to reset the settings to default. This is located at:

Users/username/Music/Spitfire Audio – on a MacC:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ Spitfire Audio – on a PC.

Q: MY LIST OF PRESETS IS EMPTY, HOW DO I SOLVE THIS?

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If you have moved your Haunted House Library folder, you can solve this problem by using the “Locate Library” feature in the Spitfire Audio App.

If this does not solve the problem, the library likely needs reauthorizing, to do this, use the “repair” feature in the Spitfire Audio App. This means that there is an error, you can click the exclamation mark to open a log with further details. It is likely that using the “Repair” and “Locate Library” features in the Spitfire Audio App will solve the problem but if not, contact our support team at spitfireaudio.com/support and attach the log.

Q: CAN I INSTALL ON MORE THAN ONE COMPUTER?

With our products, you have two licenses. This means that you are allowed to download and install on two computers you own, say your main rig and your mobile rig. If you have purchased the library on a hard drive, you should copy the contents of the drive onto the destination machine before completing the download with the Spitfire App. If you downloaded Haunted House, you can copy the library folder over to the second machine and then use the “Repair” and “Locate Library” features in the Spitfire Audio App.

Q: I CAN’T SEE THIS IN THE KONTAKT LIBRARIES PANE AND WHEN I TRY AND LOAD IT INTO KONTAKT IT SAYS NO LIBRARY FOUND

This library does not run in Kontakt, it is a standalone plug-in that you can run in your chosen DAW.

Q: HOW DO I AUTHORIZE A HAUNTED HOUSE ON A MACHINE NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET?

It is not possible to authorize Haunted House on a machine not connected to the internet. Authorization is done with the Spitfire Audio  App and an internet connection is required.

Q: HOW CAN I REDOWNLOAD A PRODUCT?

This can easily be done via your Spitfire Audio App. To reset both your entire library download or the latest update;

• Open up the Spitfire Audio App and log in with your account email and password.• Select the product artwork you wish to redownload• On this page is a “cogwheel”. Select this, choose “reset” from the menu. Then “Reset Entire Download” (for a full download) or (Latest Update) for the latest update. This will reset your latest update ready for install again. You can repeat this process for any of the libraries you own.

Note that there is a limit to how many times you can reset your downloads in a certain time frame. If you do exceed your reset limit please get in touch.

Q: DIFFICULTIES IN DOWNLOADING /INSTALLING

Customers may find that they have some difficulties in the downloading process. If you find that you are having some trouble, please check the list below for possible causes:

  • The formatting of your drive, if it is FAT32 this will cause errors because there is a maximum file size with this format of 4GB and our download files will exceed this limit. To solve this problem, reformat your drive or use a different drive. We recommend NTFS on PC and Mac OS Extended on Mac. Other possible issues:
  • Spitfire App freezes in the “Extracting” stage for hours. This may be because our libraries are often very large files, and this is the stage where the compressed files are extracted and placed in their final locations on the hard drive. There could be hundreds of GB of content to unpack, so it really can take hours. If you’re unsure whether it has crashed or is simply extracting files, visit the installation folder you chose when you started the install. If everything is working normally you’ll see various files appearing in the folder (or one of its sub-folders).
  • If your download gets stuck and is continually cycling and not resuming, please get in touch with us, giving us as much detail as possible about your setup. It would be helpful if you can tell us your operating system, where you are downloading from (your country, and also whether you’re at home or work), your ISP, and whether there are any proxy servers or firewalls between your computer and the internet.

Q: I HAVE FAST INTERNET, WHY IS MY DOWNLOAD SLOW?

We have no direct influence on your actual download speeds, our libraries are hosted on Amazon S3 servers which are normally very quick but it may well be that at certain times of the day when traffic is particularly busy, your ISP may throttle your connection speeds. We would advise you to leave your download running overnight as speeds should ramp up at less busy times. Our Spitfire App downloader aims to use as much of the available bandwidth as possible to give you the quickest possible speeds and may take several minutes to reach its peak.

Q: CAN I TRY BEFORE I BUY?No – it is not currently possible to demo our products.

If you go to our Youtube channel you’ll see many many walkthroughs containing detailed info about all our products — you can hear them being played in real-time with no smoke and mirrors!

Q: MY LIBRARIES ARE NOT SHOWING UP IN MY SPITFIRE APP

A handful of customers may find that when they log into their Spitfire App, some of their previously purchased products do not show up in the ‘Installed’ section or in the ‘Download Ready’ section either. It may be that you have purchased these under another email address. Checking other possible email addresses for your previous purchases may help to find these missing products. If this is not the case, and these missing products were purchased a few years ago, please create a support ticket telling us your account email address, and any serial numbers you may have to go with these missing products. Our support team can also merge one or more accounts together if you’d like to consolidate all your purchases in one place.  The more information we have, the quicker we can get you back up and running!

Q: HOW DO I UPDATE MY PRODUCTS?

The main premise of downloading our products is that our Spitfire App downloads into the folder you choose, so it is important to choose the folder above where you want the download to go. The best file path for our products is something very simple, a long file path will cause errors as there is a character limit on how far the Spitfire App can read. We advise a file path of something along the lines of Samples Drive > Spitfire Audio When it comes to downloading / updating– if you have a folder called ‘Spitfire Audio’ always point the Spitfire App to the folder Spitfire Audio – never go into this folder and choose the actual library in question.

Q: HOW DO I REDOWNLOAD THE LATEST UPDATE?

With the continuous improvements to our Spitfire Audio App, we have incorporated the ability to reset your own downloads. This can easily be done via your SpitfireAudio App.Open up the Spitfire Audio App and log in with your account email and password.

  • Select the product artwork you wish to redownload
  • On this page is a “cogwheel”. Select this, choose “reset” from the menu. Then “ResetEntire Download” (for a full download) or (Latest Update) for the latest update.
  • This will reset your latest update ready for install again.You can repeat this process for any other updates you wish.If you do not see the option to reset your download in your Spitfire Audio App, we would advise downloading the latest version of the Spitfire App fromspitfireaudio.com/info/library-manager/.

Q: I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR AGES FOR MY DOWNLOAD LINKS

We run all our orders through a fraud-checking process. The automatic fraud check takes 20 minutes (but can take up to an hour during a very busy period, eg. Black Friday) If your order gets caught at this stage, we run a manual order check, and this can delay the processing of your order for up to 24 hours (though this would be a rare and exceptional case). You should however receive an order confirmation email IMMEDIATELY upon placing your order. This confirms that your order has successfully been logged into our system and that your payment was successfully taken. Please check your junk folders before contacting our support.

Q: CAN I DOWNLOAD ON A PC, THEN TRANSFER TO A MAC OR VICEVERSA?

Yes, you can copy the library folder and plugin files over to the second machine and then use the “Repair” and “Locate Library” features in the Spitfire Audio App. Please note that although the majority of the download can be done on a separate machine, you will always need an internet connection to finish the authorization process.

Q: HOW DO I DOWNLOAD PRODUCTS ON MAC OSX 10.9?

The version of the Spitfire App needed to install Haunted House only supports Mac OSX 10.10 and upwards.

Q: I HAVE FOUND A BUGIn some cases, we can’t squash them all and bugs shamefully make their way through.If you think you have found a bug, please contact us with all the relevant information;

  • A description of the bug you have found
  • A screencast (video) of the bug happening, or an audio example
  • The exact preset name (or presets) in question and also the library giving us as much detail as possible will help us get to the bottom of the issue.

Q: WHAT IS YOUR REFUNDS / RETURNS POLICY?

If you have NOT completed the download/ installation process, and bought within 14 days then we CAN refund/return your product, please contact support with your account email address and order number so we can handle this quickly. If you HAVE completed the installation process (even if you’ve not yet registered your serial number), please see our EULA in regards to why we do not accept refunds and returns. We can refund hard drive orders up until the point when the drive is dispatched from our office. This is usually 1-2 days after your order.

Q: I’VE FORGOTTEN MY PASSWORD

If you have forgotten your password, please see this link spitfireaudio.com/my-account/login/, and click ‘Forgotten Password’. If at some point in the past you asked us to merge two or more accounts but have since forgotten, you MAY find that the forgotten password isn’t working for the email address you asked us to merge FROM. In this case, please contact support with your name, and any email addresses you think we might know about, and we’ll work out what has happened.

APPENDIX B —DEFAULT CC MAPPINGS

Dynamics 1
Global Gain 7
Global Pan 10
Expression 11
Attack 92
Release 17
Reverb 19
Delay 91
Stretch 95
Flanger 93

References

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