top-down mixing (and why i hate it)

this is something that i hear about all the time around the internet - forums, youtube influencers as well. a lot of them swear by it actually. for myself, i actually had no idea what it was until last week. while i never really put a name  to my own personal workflow (i am by no means not very book-smart i.e. being familiar with terminology), top-down was something i immediately disagreed with as soon as i read upon the definition. so what is it?

top down mixing is the process of mixing with the master first, then grouped/bussed tracks, then the tracks themselves. basically, you would try and make something sound as good as it is in the master (do all your eq, compression and saturation and whatnot), then do the same thing in grouped/bussed stems, then the stems themselves; essentially working down the hierarchy of the project from most consolidated to granular. 

here are its pros:

• many claim that this saves time, since in theory you are shaping the overall sound of the track first, then tweaking small details later if at all necessary. it may be useful to do this if you want to get an idea of how the master will sound in the process of mixing, especially if the mastering chain isn’t intended to be transparent [at all]. in that sense, the sound of the mastering chain would inevitably be a part of the musical-creative process.

• in other cases where someone might use top down mixing, it could be the middle step between mixing and mastering where the intention is to simply correct the tone of the mix before sending it to separate pair of ears and a more sterile room for mastering.

so now you understand the hype. is there another method?

bottom-up on the other hand, is the opposite process where you would begin with mixing the individual tracks. you would then go on to process the grouped/bus tracks, then finally the master. now, if done right, you probably wouldn’t even have to worry about processing grouped tracks - unless you intend to make multiple tracks sound like a singular instrument (such as guitar doubles, or stacked supersaw chords).

the pros:

• you become familiar with each molecule of the mix. you are aware which sounds need cleaning and which don’t.

• you work WITH the signal flow, not against - so you know how each effect is working in order. in effect, you’re more likely fix a problem before it festers and masks itself under some effect chain on the bus or master.

so why do i hate the former?

in production or sound engineering, it’s typically best practice to work as incrementally as possible. what i mean by that is, you want to make sure your electric guitar tone sounds as good as possible right out the guitar. then as soon as that happens, you want to make sure the amp’s parameters sound as good as possible. then you process it through your mic, preamp, any outboard gear, then in-daw processing, group/bus, then finally, master. here’s another case - if you’re making a patch on serum, i suggest you make it sound as good as possible within the plugin before adding effects afterwards. you can of course, jump plus or minus a few steps in the chain back and forth especially if you are trying to experiment and your ears already understand how the signal is affected with each effect iteration.

in context of mixing, top-down is the complete opposite. you begin with the final processing without first fixing or addressing what’s problematic in the mix. if a kick is absurdly loud, in top down mixing you might mask it with a limiter first. once you hit the ‘bottom’ part of the process, you might totally forget about how loud that kick is which may warrant other problems - other instruments being ducked or distorted by it. in some cases, you might think this problem is coming from anywhere but the kick, hence the problem festers. without the chain (which i would call a crutch at this point), you have a flawed mixdown which you cannot have in a perfect master. 

in light of all this, i shouldn’t try and blow any method out of the water. like anything with music, there aren’t any rules. there are times where i do catch myself mixing into something, but i find it completely irresponsible to mix into something during the majority of the process of mixing or even while creating the music. the only time i find top-down mixing acceptable is when the bottom-up method has already been applied before the stage of using reference music to compare the mix/master. at that point, i am getting the overall tone to match my references, and that’s where i’ll begin to process the master and groups to shape the tone of the mix as a whole. bottom-up then top-down (if necessary), like a triangle. konami code. peak nerd performance. thanks for coming to my ted talk.