Dry vs. wet
Dry is the untouched signal, wet is the effected version. The mix knob just decides how much of each you hear.
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What it is
Dry is the signal as recorded, untouched. Wet is the output of the effect, all of it, nothing else. Every reverb, delay, and chorus has a mix control deciding the ratio, and '30 percent wet' just means you are hearing mostly the original with a slice of the effect on top.
Two ways to wire it. On an insert the plugin sits on the channel and the mix knob does the blending. On a send/return the dry stays on the channel, a copy goes to an effect bus set to 100 percent wet, and the send level does the blending, which is how you get one reverb shared across a whole mix. Parallel compression is the same trick with a squashed copy instead of a room.
Gotcha: 100 percent wet is correct on a return bus and almost always wrong on an insert, where it deletes the original. The other trap is the deliverable: 'send me the dry files' means unprocessed, so if you print takes with reverb baked in, nobody downstream can undo your taste. Keep dry versions of everything.
Ask AI for it
Set up a wet/dry blend for this track the professional way: keep the dry channel routed to the master, send a copy of it to an aux return, put the reverb on that return at 100 percent wet, and blend with the send and return levels instead of the plugin mix knob. The dry path must stay intact; the send is a parallel copy, not a reroute. Give me starting send levels for a subtle sit-in-the-room sound versus an obvious effect, tell me which effects belong on an insert instead (EQ, compression, de-esser), and export a fully dry version of the track alongside the processed one.