Single Cell Software

I suck something fierce at mastering. But, I've learned that most of the big name electronic artists also suck at it and outsource their mastering to someone who knows what they're doing, so I don't feel so bad :). I just get a song sounding the way I like and roll with it.

I've been thinking about giving Landr a try, though.

Landr was a waste of money before, but I'm liking my results since their latest update. Maybe actually a thing I'd spend cash on now.

But, I ain't looking for perfection. I'm just playing with noise. :)

I know the question was about how to mix and master IN CAUSTIC. For someone new to mixing and mastering, Caustic offers just enough adjustment to learn the basics. Having the haas stereo widening on each track is a handy bonus. On a "real" DAW I use a plugin for this all the time. Aside from that the only way to get sweepable eq and individual track limiting and compression is by using up effects slots.

So Caustic offers enough control to do a basic mix including automation. And then you get one delay and one reverb send and one master eq and limiter. These are all handy but I've gotten to the point where I dont actually try and do a final mix/master in Caustic. I activate the export stems function from the secret menu and export stems. First I remove any panning, eq before I export stems. Though I do leave the width control on. I then import the stems into AudioEvolution. I have this thing about keeping it all on the tablet. If I fly the stems into my DAW on my computer, well I might as well just be using it from the start. Thats just my hang up. Doing it 100% on android is kind of a challenge I enjoy.

Anyway mixing principles apply to pretty much any program. So anything you'll find in general mixing tips would apply to caustic. For example the futuremusic website mentioned. You can learn all the basic stuff like eq volume and panning, dynamics control and effects.

I'm used to mixing in DAWs. I mainly use Reaper but also have a couple others. So you might run up against some limitations in Caustic. But the stems export feature is handy if thats the case.

Some things to remember in Caustic vs. traditional DAWs:

Caustic has eq for every channel but no sweepable frequencies or bandwidths. So you'll have to use the parametric eq and filter plugins.

Caustic has one reverb and one delay send on each track. This will get you far but in most of my mixes I'll use 2 or 3 reverbs depending where I want to locate things in virtual space. I generally have a reverb send set up for snare and toms and one for vocals then an overall room reverb I use in varying amounts on all the tracks to make it sound like they're all in the same environment. It's not easy to do this in Caustic without routing sounds through Modular to create additional sends.

Caustic does not have a dedicated compressor/limiter on each track. Most mixes these days have at least a little bit of dynamics processing on every channel (usually a good idea to use a little bit of it everywhere instead of a lot of it in one place) this is a generalization and there are always situations where things are done differently per your personal taste and what you're trying to get the sounds to do. Putting compression on every track in Caustic is doable but eats up your effects slots.

Also note that there is no input or make-up gain adjustment on the compressor effect in Caustic. So you might have to adjust the level coming out of the machine and then the level of the mixer channel for that machine to get the compressor to behave the way you want.

You can add more effects to a channel by routing it through Modular. But that eats up a machine slot. Lets say you want another reverb send in addition to the one you already get on each cgannel. You might want to set up one reverb to sound like a room and another reverb to be big and lush for vocals, strings or leads. You can add a Modular and put machine input modules insude it set up to receive audio from any of the tracks you want to add reverb to. Then route the machine input modules through a mixer module. In the Modular's effects slots, add a reverb effect set to 100% wet. You now have a second reverb send.

You have to think outside the box to do some things in Caustic but theres usually a way to do it.

Still for things like precision eq (5 sweepable bands with Q control) and highly configurable dynamics on each channel I've found it's best to just do it in another app.

One nice bonus in Caustic is the stereo widening effect on each channel. I use this all the time. It's nice to have it built in.