SPITFIRE AUDIO GAIKA War Island User Manual
- June 6, 2024
- SPITFIRE AUDIO
Table of Contents
GAIKA War Island
User Manual
INTRODUCTION
EXPANSIVE INDUSTRIAL SOUNDSCAPES FROM A MULTIDISCIPLINARY SOUND ARTIST
A timely collaboration with innovative producer and composer GAIKA, War Island
offers multi-dimensional, evolving sounds from the beating heart of London’s
industrial underground.
Featuring harsh bassy synth drones, tape-processed drums, pads, leads, and
warped vocal effects, these expansive sounds are abundantly complex by virtue
of GAIKA’s unique and sophisticated processing techniques — made accessible,
intuitive, and interactive through Spitfire Audio’s dynamic, award-winning
plug-in.
Inspired by the sounds of GAIKA’s youth and developed over a number of years,
these visceral, abstract environments are inundated with the distinctive buzz
of an ever-changing and perceptibly dystopian London, offering a fresh
creative lense not only for experimental producers but composers looking for
cutting edge sounds to enhance their scores.
This venture is part of a larger scale anthology of work by GAIKA also called War Island — encompassing a record, sample library, an installation, film, writing, and technology — which speaks to the universal experience of modern existence absorbed by and inspired by urban sprawl, in a sharp assessment of the state of post-pandemic Britain and its place in a changing world.
QUICK SPECS
MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.13 to OS 11
Minimum: 2.8GHz i5 minimum (quad-core), 8GB RAM. Recommended: 2.8GHz I7
(sixcore), 16GB RAM.
Intel and Apple Silicon/ARM are supported.
32-bit is not supported.
PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit) Intel
Core i7 6th gen and later or AMD Ryzen 7
32-bit is not supported.
2.01 GB install Size
DOWNLOADING & INSTALLING
Thank you for buying GAIKA – War Island. If you are new to Spitfire Audio 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 APP
When 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:
- TABS the default tab is My Products, which shows all of the libraries on your Spitfire Account. Downloads will show currently downloading products.
- FILTERS Clicking these filters will quickly display products are not installed, those already installed, and any available updates. Clicking again will remove the filter.
- LIBRARY All libraries and plugins will appear with their artwork on the My Products tab. Clicking this artwork will open the product page.
- INSTALL/UPDATE buttons allow you to quickly start a download directly from the My Products tab, instead of clicking through to the Library. Next to the button, the size of the download is shown.
THE SPITFIRE APP PREFERENCES
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 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.
THE DEDICATED PLUGIN
Unlike other Spitfire libraries, you don’t need Kontakt Player or the full Kontakt to run this library. GAIKA – War Island 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 > GAIKA – War Island
CUBASE
- Right-click the track window and choose ‘Add Instrument Track’
- Underneath the ‘Instrument’ dropdown, choose GAIKA – War Island
- 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 GAIKA – War Island available as an option
HAVE A LOOK AROUND
GAIKA – WAR ISLAND INTERFACE
OPENING YOUR FIRST PRESETS
When you first open this library, this is what you will see. It opens with a
blank preset, so you can load any preset you choose first.
- TOP MENU
- PRESET SELECTOR
- MAIN CONTROLS
- KEYBOARD PANEL
PRESET SELECTOR
-
PRESET NAME
Here you can see the currently selected preset. -
FILTERS
Click on a filter to only show those presets.
The filters are subtractive, so selecting “Atmosphere” will show you only the Atmosphere presets.
Click the “Clear” button to return to a view of all presets. -
INSTRUMENT GROUP
As you scroll through the available presets, the instrument group is displayed here. -
STAR
Click here to favorite your presets. Once “Starred” they show in the “Star” filter. -
PREVIEW
Playback a short example of the preset without having to load it! Enormously helpful when choosing a sound. -
PRESET LIST
Scroll through the list of presets here.
Double-click to load a preset or click the ‘Load’ button. -
INFORMATION
Hover over on the “i” icon to see some information about the preset. -
NEXT, PREVIOUS AND SAVE
With the presets view collapsed you will be 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. -
SCROLL
Drag up and down to see more presets. -
LOAD
Select a preset and then press “load” (or double-click the preset).
MAIN CONTROLS
-
EXPRESSION
This is a control for you to adjust the level of the technique. -
DYNAMICS
This slider will fade from a processed signal to a close signal. -
KNOB
The configurable knob allows you to control any of the other available parameters for the particular preset.
Hover over the knob and it will turn black.
3.1 CLICK: Click and you will be able to see all available controls for a particular preset.
GAIKA – War Island features 6 additional controls on the Knob Control depending on the patch.
REVERB – Controls the amount of reverb is added. You can select
alternative reverb types in the reverb selection box.
(CC#19). More information on Page 11.
ATTACK – This allows you to change the length of the attack of a note.
(CC#94)
RELEASE – This allows you to change the length of the release of a note.
(CC#17)
CHORUS – Controls the amount of chorus being added. (CC#95)
FLANGER – Controls the amount of flanger being added. (CC#96)
PHASER – Controls the number of phasers being added. (CC#97)
TOP MENU
-
LED
Shows when an instrument is loaded by lighting solid green. If this is flashing, your instrument is not fully loaded yet. -
CPU METER
An indication of how much your CPU is being used, the green flash next to the CPU meter will turn red when you are overloading it. -
DISK METER
How much of the sample drive bandwidth is being used. If this is close to, or going over 100% it’s time to consider a faster drive. See next page for settings that can help get the most out of a slower drive. -
MEMORY
This shows how much RAM you are currently using in this instance of the plugin. While the preset is loading, this will show the instrument loading into memory. -
VOICES
Shows how many voices are being used at any one time. -
REFRESH
Refresh 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. -
REVERB TYPE
Select which type of Reverb you would like to be active, choose from 7 different impulse responses. -
MIDI CH
Set the MIDI channel that will control the instrument here. If in doubt select “any” so that the instrument will react to any incoming MIDI messages. -
TUNE
Move 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. -
PAN
Pan the signal left and right. Cmd/Ctrl-click to reset. -
VOLUME
Control the overall volume of the instrument. -
PLUGIN SETTINGS
J. 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 REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.13 to OS 11
Minimum: 2.8GHz i5 minimum (quad-core), 8GB RAM.
Recommended: 2.8GHz I7 (six-core), 16GB
RAM. Intel and Apple Silicon/ARM are supported.
32-bit is not supported.
PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit) Intel
Core i7 6th gen and later or AMD Ryzen 7
PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit) Intel
Core i7 6th gen and later or AMD Ryzen 7
Q: I WANT TO RESET THE PLUGIN SETTINGS TO THE DEFAULT
You can delete the .settings file to reset the settings to default.
This is located at: Users/username/Music/Spitfire Audio – on a Mac
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ Spitfire Audio – on a PC.
Q: MY LIST OF PRESETS IS EMPTY, HOW DO I SOLVE THIS?
If you have moved the GAIKA – War Island
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.
Q: I SEE A RED EXCLAMATION MARK IN THE TOP LEFT, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
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: 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 GAIKA WAR ISLAND ON A MACHINE NOT CONNECTED TO THE
INTERNET?
It is not possible to authorize this library 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 installation 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 Spitfire Audio 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 “Reset
Entire Download” (for a full download) or (Latest Update) for the latest update.
• This will reset your latest update ready for installation 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 from spitfireaudio.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 VICE VERSA?
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 GAIKA – War Island only
supports Mac OSX 10.10 to OS 11.
Q: I HAVE FOUND A BUG
In 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
Release
17
Reverb
19
Attack
94
Chorus
95
Flanger
96
Phaser 96
GAIKA – WAR ISLAND