Dry wet FX inserts

Forums Forums SQ Forums SQ troubleshooting Dry wet FX inserts

This topic contains 2 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of Brian Brian 2 years, 1 month ago.

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  • #106057
    Profile photo of Tom Metz
    Tom Metz
    Participant

    I am a bit confused about the dry – wet mix values when using a FX as an insert. Apparently it doesn’t work like a ‘balance’. In that case there would be only one parameter i.e. 0 = completely dry and 100 completely wet. Does anyone have a clue what is going on?

    #106058
    Profile photo of SteffenR
    SteffenR
    Participant

    What you mean? It blends between dry and fx signal.

    #106078
    Profile photo of Brian
    Brian
    Participant

    I won’t assume that everyone is using the FX like I do, but I will explain what I do.

    Normally, all the FX are turned to the default setting with regard to the wet/dry mix (I believe it is “-inf dry and 0dB wet”). This is how most people would expect it to work. Some effects are used as inserts while others use a FX return channel so that I can “dial in” the amount of FX I want to introduce. Another use case is “parallel compression” where I am heavily compressing a set of inputs via a group, but then using the group fader to “dial in” the amount of compression I want.

    An alternative way to set up the FX would be to use the wet/dry setting in leu of these faders. Take for example my drum groups. I have both a regular drum group and a drum parallel compression group. I could drop the parallel compression group completely and simply insert the compressor on the regular drum group and use the wet/dry mix dial to “dial in” the amount of compression I want. (Although I don’t want to compress everything in the drum group – like cymbals – which is why I have it set up the way I do).

    Hopefully that helps explain how it works……

    If not, here is an older post by @KeithJA&H
    “Although parallel compression is built into each processing channel on the SQ, you can think of it in the same way as having two channels next to each other, each with a fader.
    One channel is the uncompressed ‘dry’ signal, with full dynamic range. The other channel is exactly the same signal, but has been affected by the compressor so it is ‘wet’.
    If you had dry at 0dB and wet at -inf it would be the same sound as if you hadn’t even switched the compressor in.
    With -inf dry and 0dB wet, it would be the same as if you had the compressor switched in and parallel path off.
    So having -20dB dry signal and 0dB wet just means you’ll hear less of the uncompressed version relative to the compressed version.
    What it will actually sound like will be completely dependent on the source material and compressor settings.

    The reason there are two controls instead of a single wet/dry balance is because we spoke with many engineers who were used to having to use sends and returns or duplicate channels to achieve parallel compression. Almost all of them said they either started with the dry signal and brought in the wet, or started with the wet signal and brought in the dry.

    Cheers,
    Keith.”

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