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.

   

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 own delay is fixed at about 24 ms, because the tracker has to hear a little of a note before it can tell you its pitch. Your buffer size adds to that. A 5 ms buffer, common on Apple Silicon at 48 kHz, keeps the whole round trip under 30 ms. Whether that feels playable depends on you and the instrument, so try it before settling on a buffer size. Larger buffers trade responsiveness for CPU headroom, which is a fair trade while mixing and a bad one while performing.

Next: what the tracker hears.