Some things in hardware would be very difficult to do but software allows us to do them, and sometimes even simpler, both conceptually and ‘under the hood’.
I believe DAWs would not be where they are today if they strickly followed the limitations of the hardware they supposedly mimic. Certainly DAWs offer a far more flexible routing facility without the need for lots of cable looms and multiple patchbays. FX plugins offer a close approximation to hardware that would have paid for all the equipment and expenses of our first CD several times over.
And as many these days have not been brought up on hardware mixers, they are not bound by thinking that imposes such hardware ‘rules’. Of course, they still need to understand the basics of levels and signal optimisation, especially at analog-digital interfaces.
As for an inline dry/wet contol for each, it is quite feasable and fairly trivial, software routing wise. And that it could save creating a whole FX track and associated send routing (with its substantial extra screen real estate) is a bonus. The control itself doesn’t have to be big, but just like a trim on an input channel.
not so good idea
wet/dry is already implemented via the sends menu and FX channels
yet another wet/dry option, together with wet/dry options in the plugins itself only can cause confusion and level gain staging errors.
imagin the amount of topics being opened: “which wet/dry option should i use?” “what are the differences between the wet/dry options?” “why do i have wet/dry on both my plugin in, send and in my mixer?”
Cubase is currently flexible and consistent, with predictable routing outcome and results. no need for breaking structure because some people don’t know how to setup parallel processing properly, or don’t understand how a send/return works.
Please don’t cater for noobs, just RTFM
not a good idea to make things even faster and comfortable?
I run sounds in AUX channels everyday and hate needing for every next distortion type a new aux channel that i need to setup first. Especially if you work with groups too you sometimes need to stuff the Auxs to the groups too for getting it running the same way you would with thos mix buttons. Another reason is while a mix button compensates levels automaticly you need to play around with pre and post sents to get the wet effect without the direct signal becomes to loud. Many plugs do have mix buttons and i and my friends love them. Most used studio-plugs do have those buttons for a big reason → they are efficient. Look at PSP stuff. You really do not need to thing about sidechaining, compensating levels… just try it by playing around with the mix button.
Remember! You can also mix plugins in Offline-Mode. So why it should not be possible to do it in a submenu behind or above the pluginwindows?
Every one who says yes thats great should have been tryed out the pre/post button in the sent menu cause you can only wet the signal 100% pushing this button. You have more options using AUX faders. You can Pan the effect right and the dry signal left for example but for some reasons especially vocals, mono signals, experimenting, a dry/wet button would be very cool. Just another reason… … you have the option were the plugin sits in the insert chain and can mix a decent compresson after a deesser for example. Or a 10% Amp distortion before a chorus. This is not possible as easy with an aux setup.
Consider the following scenario:
You want to dynamically automate an audio track from 100% dry to 100% wet, but still be able to control the volume.
Conservative (there are:
Create fx track
Enable and automate send
Add plug in to audio track for automating volume (like mix6to2)
Automate volume
Workflow optimized:
Add plug-in as an insert
Automate dry/wet mix
In fact, this shows that dry/wet is NOT (easily) implemented via the sends menu, in fact, that would be the opposite of what sends are all about. Dry/wet mix is a key element for inserts but seldom for sends where the wet is added to the dry signal.
Take the example above only add five more inserts plugs to the same track that you want to mix in independently at different parts of a song. What seems more logical, creating 6 different fx tracks + send automations, or creating 6 inserts + auto? What if I on top of that want to use the sends for what they’re meant for, like reverb, create a group track to get more sends?
The problem that a generic dry/wet mix would solve has been described well in the posts above.
Of course there are plug-ins already featuring dry/wet mix, but there are all to many insert friendly ones which don’t.
This is a good load of chat, a few different opinions, a lively discussion…
Yet I still think that it’s a great idea, a simple wet/dry slider on the top of each plugin window would be very welcome to me.
As for implementation I’d estimate not terribly hard, not as hard as brand new features - and I have many years of software programming experience as well as many years of hardware and software studio experience - I’m not a noob in either.
But discussion of the software effort involved is not really my/our concern, it’s Steinberg’s if they choose to implement it. Our concern is whether we want the feature or not. As said, I’d like it because it would make the many plugins which don’t have a mix knob mixable…
You can easily set wet/dry mix for each plugin, and reroute the channels as you require to build your own plugin “network”… I think it’s easier to use and more flexible and stable than the XLU…
/FD
you both are sure right, and thanks for the head up on these two plugins, BUT:
It’s another plugin, another “workaround”, involves further steps to get “the job done”. Imagine you inserted a distortion plug without a dry/wet knob and afterwards want to try out subtle changes in the wet amount… You’ll have to save a preset for you distortion plugin (hoping that itself has a preset management system, because you can’t load cubases vst3presets in Chainer or DDMF Metaplugin…), then replace the distortion plugin with Chainer or DDMF Metaplugin and insert the distortion plugin into these, recalling your saved preset, if possible…
And now imagine a simple dry/wet knob in the plugin window header…
But then again, most plugins which are meant as being inserted already provide a dry/wet knob…
But i also think Cubase should be able to do such simple things like: dry/wet, Midi to Automation… out of the Box…
without “get lost in code” and installing 3rd Party SW… hey don’t worry, you can use Loops in which the dry/wet ratio of the FX is allready recorded with NoobCash…
… you have the option were the plugin sits in the insert chain and can mix a decent compresson after a deesser for example. Or a 10% Amp distortion before a chorus. This is not possible as easy with an aux setup.