Blend vs Dry/Wet - difference?

jerps

I once heard a YouTuber lament that a synth’s unison had a dry/wet as opposed to a blend. I’ve since noticed some effect modules have dry/wet or mix and some have blend. Ie. Mela 4’s comb filter has “blend”, but its flanger (and most other modules) has “mix”.

So I guess I have two questions… 1) is mix the same thing as dry/wet and 2) how is blend different from the other two?

jerps

I asked my good friend and AI companion, Gerard Pierre Talbot this question:

I've seen some synth effects have a "dry/wet" setting, some have a "mix" setting while others have a "blend" setting. What is the difference between these settings?

Its answer:

In digital signal processing (DSP) for synthesizers and audio effects, the terms "dry/wet," "mix," and "blend" often refer to similar functions, but there can be subtle differences:

Dry/Wet: This usually refers to the balance between the unaffected (dry) signal and the processed (wet) signal. 0% wet means you only hear the original sound, 100% wet means you only hear the effect.

Mix: This is often similar to dry/wet, but in some contexts, it might imply a more complex combination of multiple signals or layers, not just the original and its processed version.

Blend: This term is also similar to dry/wet, but sometimes it's used in more specific contexts, like blending two distinct effects or sounds together, rather than just adding an effect to the original signal.

In practice, for many synths and effects, these terms can be used interchangeably and refer to how much of the effect is added to your original sound. The exact meaning can depend on the specific software or hardware you are using.

So it sounds like the difference is fairly subtle. Is the comb filter in Mela 4 is blending feedback and feedforward?

animalelder

It seems like a very interesting area to investigate. But it feels context dependent to me.

I don’t have Mela 4, but most of the times I remember seeing a blend knob is for unison on oscillators and that’s about it.

And for comb filtering that I remember, there was an Amount knob.

ambrosiajam

A lot of it depends on the effect, too

Delay vs drive vs compression all are MASSIVELY different when at 100%

Tarekith

For me it was always:

Wet/Dry - You can move from fully dry to full wet with one control. Halfway through the knob range is 50% Dry and 50% wet.

Blend - The dry signal is always 100%, but you can add in more Wet signal from 1-100% to "blend" it in. Halfway through the knob range is Dry signal at full volume and wet signal at 50% volume. Some effects work the opposite, where the wet signal is always 100% and you can blend in more dry.

robertssl

Blend remain me whiskey 😂 to be more serious you got in audio Dry and wet and it the knob is at 100 % on the wet it is still wet. In pro audio tamed is more subtle to express indeed treatment of the sound for a compressor type.

Words express just an idea and personal experience as autist that doesn’t express nothing to me but my ears know what it is.

Train your ears everyday rather than reading definitions of words , your ears are more important. I know deaf sound engineers and many nearly deaf good musicians (very common) that perceive that subtle things because sound if just vibration in the air. There are more false idea in any forum and even among pro than we can imagine.