WettBoi manual: every control explained

Hardwave WettBoi is a focused effect chain for hardstyle, rawstyle and hardcore tracks. It gives you a single place to shape reverb, side-chain, LFO modulation and delay while keeping the overall mix under control.

The plug-in is built to solve two common problems: a cluttered effect rack that makes it hard to keep the wet/dry balance consistent, and the need for quick, musical side-chain and delay tricks that stay in sync with the fast BPM of hard dance music.

Installing and opening it

Every Hardwave plug-in installs through the Hardwave Suite, the plug-in manager app (download it from hardwavestudios.com/downloads).

1. Open the Hardwave Suite and sign in with your Hardwave account.
2. Find Hardwave WettBoi and click Install. The Suite puts the VST3 and CLAP versions where your DAW looks for them.
3. In your DAW, rescan your plug-ins if it does not pick up new ones on its own, then load WettBoi on a track like any other effect.

How the signal flows

The Routing control decides how the effects are chained. The window shows the current choice in the bottom bar.

• Parallel: the effects process the input side by side and their wet signals are added together.
• Rev→Dly: the reverb feeds into the delay.
• Dly→Rev: the delay feeds into the reverb.

Mix then blends that wet result with your dry signal: 0 % is dry only, 100 % is wet only.

Reverb

Reverb adds space and depth to synths, kicks or vocal chops. Turn it on to enable the effect, then pick a type that matches the source:

• Room: short ambience.
• Hall: larger, longer spaces.
• Plate: dense and bright.
• Spring: darker and shorter, with a boomy, dripping character.

Pre-Delay lets you separate the initial hit from the tail, useful for keeping the punch of a kick clear. Size and Decay control how big the virtual room feels and how long the tail lasts. Damp shapes the high-frequency absorption, while Width spreads the reverb across the stereo field.

Rev Wet sets the overall level of the reverb in the mix. The Freeze button holds the tail indefinitely, great for creating atmospheric pads. Use the high-pass and low-pass EQ (Rev EQ HP and Rev EQ LP) to carve out unwanted low rumble or high harshness from the reverb tail.

Sidechain

The sidechain gives you the classic pump. It ducks the wet signal, the reverb and the delay together, after Routing has combined them. Your dry signal is never ducked. The tails get out of the way when the kick hits and swell back in between.

The ducking follows a key signal. WettBoi checks the level of the key against SC Threshold, and the other three controls shape what happens next.

SC Threshold is the level the key has to rise above to start the ducking. A key that stays under it does nothing. Lower the threshold toward -60 dB and quieter parts of the key trigger the duck. Raise it toward 0 dB and only the loudest peaks do. At 0 dB the key would have to go above full scale, so the ducking will almost never start.

SC Attack is how fast the ducking closes on the wet signal once the key is over the threshold. A short attack gives a tight, sudden dip. A long attack lets more of each hit through before the wet signal drops.

SC Hold is how long the duck stays where it is after the key falls back under the threshold, before the recovery starts.

SC Release is how long the wet signal takes to swell back after the hold. A longer release gives a slower, smoother return.

There is no depth control and no on/off switch for the sidechain. While the key stays over the threshold, the ducking keeps deepening toward silence on the wet signal, at the speed set by Attack. A long kick therefore ducks deeper than a short click.

SC Source picks the key. Internal uses WettBoi's own input, which is the track it sits on, with left and right averaged. Sidechain uses the sidechain input your DAW connects to WettBoi, for example a kick track, again with left and right averaged. If you choose Sidechain and WettBoi has no stereo sidechain input available, it falls back to its own input, the same as Internal.

LFO

The LFO adds periodic movement to one target at a time. Turn it on and set a Rate in Hz. Slow rates give evolving movement, faster rates give wobble.

Depth controls how far the LFO pushes the target away from its own setting. Phase offsets the wave, from 0 to 360 degrees. Shape lets you pick the waveform: Sine for smooth sweeps, Tri for a softer curve, Saw for a rising ramp, Square for abrupt jumps, or S&H for random steps.

LFO Target decides what gets moved:

• Rev Wet: the reverb wet level.
• Dly Wet: the delay wet level.
• Dly FB: the delay feedback.
• Filter: the cutoff of the delay's low-pass filter, which is the Delay LP control. WettBoi has no other filter for the LFO to move. The Delay LP setting is the centre and the cutoff stays between 1000 and 20000 Hz.

Delay

Delay adds rhythmic repeats that are essential for hard dance builds and breakdowns. Enable it and decide whether you want the timing locked to the host tempo with Delay Sync.

With Delay Sync on, the Note L and Note R selectors set the times in musical divisions: 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and 1/1, plus dotted versions of 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2 shown with a d, such as d1/8. With Delay Sync off, Delay L and Delay R set the times in milliseconds.

Ping Pong decides whether the right time counts. Ping Pong is on by default. With it on, the repeats bounce between the speakers using one time, the left one (Note L or Delay L), and the right time is ignored. Turn Ping Pong off and the left and right times become independent, so you can offset them for a stereo spread.

Feedback controls how many repeats you hear; higher values give longer tails. Delay HP and Delay LP filter the repeats as they feed back, so they prevent low-end buildup and high-frequency harshness from the second repeat onward. The first echo is not filtered. Saturation also works on the feedback path: it drives the repeats through soft clipping, so grit builds as the repeats go on. Mod Rate and Mod Depth add subtle modulation to the delay times for movement. Dly Wet sets the level of the delay in the overall mix.

Mix, Bypass and Routing

These three controls affect the whole plug-in output. Mix sets the balance between the dry signal and the combined wet effects. Bypass lets you compare the processed and unprocessed sound instantly. Routing is explained in "How the signal flows" above.

Starting points

Every value below sits inside the range in the tables above.

Classic hardstyle pump. In your DAW, send the kick to WettBoi's sidechain input.

• Reverb: On, Reverb Type Hall, Decay 3 s, Rev Wet 40 %.
• Sidechain: SC Source Sidechain, SC Threshold -12 dB, SC Attack 5 ms, SC Hold 60 ms, SC Release 300 ms.
• LFO: On, LFO Rate 2 Hz, LFO Depth 30 %, LFO Target Rev Wet.
• Delay: On, Delay Sync On, Note L 1/8, Note R d1/8, Feedback 45 %, Dly Wet 35 %, Ping Pong Off.
• Mix and Routing: Mix 80 %, Routing Parallel.

Rawstyle atmospheric break.

• Reverb: On, Reverb Type Plate, Size 80 %, Decay 5 s, Damp 60 %, Rev Wet 70 %, Freeze On.
• Sidechain: SC Source Internal and SC Threshold -18 dB, the default. The wet signal ducks whenever the track's own level rises above -18 dB.
• LFO: On, LFO Rate 0.5 Hz, LFO Depth 70 %, LFO Target Filter. This sweeps the Delay LP cutoff around 5000 Hz.
• Delay: On, Delay Sync Off, Ping Pong Off, Delay L 800 ms, Delay R 1200 ms, Feedback 20 %, Delay HP 200 Hz, Delay LP 5000 Hz, Mod Rate 0.2 Hz, Mod Depth 40 %, Dly Wet 50 %.
• Mix and Routing: Mix 65 %, Routing Rev→Dly.

If something sounds wrong

• The reverb tail sounds muddy. Cause: low frequencies in the tail. Fix: raise Rev EQ HP until the rumble clears. 200 Hz is a good place to start.
• The pump does nothing with SC Source on Sidechain. Cause: no sidechain input is reaching WettBoi, so it falls back to its own input. Fix: in your DAW, send the kick to WettBoi's sidechain input.
• The pump is too shallow or misses some kicks. Cause: the key does not rise far enough above SC Threshold. Fix: lower SC Threshold until every kick ducks the wet signal.
• The dip is too slow to close. Cause: SC Attack is too long. Fix: shorten SC Attack.
• The wet signal has not come back before the next kick. Cause: SC Release is too long. Fix: shorten SC Release.
• Changing Delay R or Note R changes nothing. Cause: Ping Pong is on, so both sides use the left time. Fix: turn Ping Pong off.

Controls, ranges and defaults are taken from the plug-in's code.