Contour

Setup

Contour needs one thing before it can track anything: the right input channel. Everything else in this page is secondary to getting that right.

  1. Pick your audio device

    Open the device dropdown at the top of the plugin and select your audio interface. If your DAW already routes audio through it, Contour inherits the same device.

  2. Set the input channel

    Contour defaults to input channel 0. On a simple interface with one microphone, that is correct and you can move on.

    The device and input-channel selector, channel 0 selected
    Device and channel selection

  3. Put on headphones

    Monitor through headphones, not speakers. Contour's synth output is a new signal, generated from your pitch — if it comes out of a speaker near your mic, the mic hears it too.

Buffer size and latency

Contour's algorithmic latency is fixed at roughly 24 ms: pitch tracking needs a short window of audio before it can commit to an f0 estimate, plus one analysis hop. Your audio buffer adds on top of that. A 5 ms buffer (common on Apple Silicon at 48 kHz) keeps the total round trip under 30 ms, close to the point where fretted instruments and voice stop noticing the delay. Larger buffers trade that responsiveness for more CPU headroom — reasonable when you are mixing, not performing.

Next: read the tracker's output.