Troubleshooting

Several problems with MIDI keyboards, recordings, sound after a phone call, and exports from a host were fixed in 1.0.4. If something sounds wrong, check that you have the latest version. The list is in What's new.

Some corners are audibly wet with SPACE at zero, and no setting takes it out. That is not a fault, and it is not Contour's reverb leaking — the space is part of the timbre itself.

The four corners of every sheet are neural decoders trained on the NSynth dataset. Some of those sources are acoustic instruments recorded with a microphone in a room; others are synthesised or electronic and have no room at all. A decoder learns whatever was in front of it, so where the source was acoustic, the early reflections and the tail are part of the spectrum it reproduces — in the same way the body of the instrument is. Contour is resynthesising a sound that already had a space around it.

SPACE is a separate reverb, added afterwards. At zero it is genuinely off: the wet signal is multiplied by exactly zero, and what reaches your ears is the dry instrument. What you can still hear is the room that came with that corner, and it cannot be switched off because it is not a process — it is what the sound is. Taking it out would mean a different recording, not a different setting.

It differs from corner to corner, so it also differs with where your finger is. Moving away from a wet corner is the only control over it, and on most sheets that is enough. To hear this clearly, put your finger in each of the four corners in turn with SPACE at zero.