An Interview With The Godfather Of Mastering Doug Sax

If ever there was a title of “Godfather of Mastering,” Doug Sax has truly earned it as evidenced by the extremely high regard that the industry holds him in. One of the first independent mastering engineers, Doug literally defined the art when he opened his world famous The Mastering Lab in Hollywood in 1967. The Lab has since moved to the quiet peace and beauty of Ojai, California, but the magic that has drawn such major diverse talents as The Who, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Diana Krall, Kenny Rogers, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Earth, Wind and Fire, Rod Stewart, Jackson Browne, and many, many more, continues to draw.

Here's a piece of the interview I did with Doug from The Mastering Engineer's Handbook 3rd edition that goes into detail not only about the evolution of mastering, but of recording as well.

"Is it true that you were the first independent mastering engineer?

Absolutely. Independent has to be clarified because if you go back to the late ‘60s and before, everything was done in-house. You were signed to a label, you were given an A&R man, and you stayed within the label. If you recorded at Capitol, then you went down to Capitol’s mastering to get your product cut to lacquer. You went to Capitol’s art department and they gave you the artist that designed your cover, and that’s the way it was. 

It was really at the end of the ‘60s that certain top producers would say, “I love the security, but I would like to work with an artist that’s not on this label. I would like to work with Streisand, but she’s on Columbia.” So they started to break off from the label and really started the process where nobody is tied to one any more. The cry became, “If you sign me, I’ll use the engineer I want and I’ll record and master where I want.” That’s 40 years of hard fought independence, so from the standpoint of an independent that is not aligned with a label, just a specialty room that handles mastering, the answer is yes. 

I was one of the pioneers when there was no independent business. We opened up our doors in December 27 of 1967 and by ’71 or ’72, you couldn’t get into the place because we were so busy. By ’72 we were doing 20 percent of the top 100 chart and there weren’t a lot of competitors. There was Artisan in LA, and Sterling and maybe Master Disk just starting in New York, and that was it. Now there seems to be a thousand because the reality is that it’s very easy for someone to go into this business now, or for the artist or engineer do it yourself. You can get a workstation with all the bells and whistles for a song and a dance. A Neumann lathe setup in 1972 was $75,000, and that was just the cutting system; you still needed a room and a console, so you had to have a big budget, and there was only a few people doing it as a result. Now you fire it right up.

And don’t forget that in the industry for almost ten years there were no tones on an analog tape, so you didn’t know how to line up to the machine. 

There were no tones?

No tones. I’m one of the instigators in railing on these guys to go back and print the tones so I could at least set my machine to where your machine was. There was no such thing as nearfield monitoring either. It didn’t exist. People used to go to these strange studios with big speakers in the wall, most of which were useless as far as relating to the real world, and the engineers never knew that they were out in left field because they had nothing to take home. The cassette was just starting and only a handful of engineers that I can think of actually had a 15 ips (inches per second) tape machine at home that they could take home a mix and find out where they were. 

I started the process in the early ‘70s just in self-defense. I would say, “Look, before you do anything, come in with your first mix on-the-house and find out if you’re in trouble. We’ll listen to it and get you straight.” I just got tired of watching these guy’s eyes open the first time they ever heard their mixes outside of the studio. “Oh, my God. I couldn’t hear any highs in the studio so I kept adding highs.” That absolute horrendous reality is really the reason why nearfields came in.

How has mastering changed over the years from the time you started until the way it is now?

My answer is maybe different than everyone else’s. It hasn’t changed at all! In other words, what you’re doing is finessing what an engineer and artist has created into its best possible form. If an engineer says, “I don’t know what it is, but the vocal always seems to be a little cloudy,” I can go in there and keep his mix the same yet still make the vocal clearer. That’s what I did in 1968 and that’s what I still do. The process is the same and the goal is the same. I don’t master differently for different formats because you essentially make it sound as proper as you can, and then you transfer it to the final medium using the best equipment.

One of the things that has changed recently is that every client that comes in wants vinyl again. Almost nothing comes into the Lab that doesn’t do vinyl anymore. For one thing, it doesn’t cost that much. For another $1500 you can be doing vinyl, and you’re in a young market as the people buying these turntables are 18 to 25, and that’s proven. If you want to get your album to people that are really listening to the music, that’s the way. It’s also where the people that are going to buy hi-res downloads are coming from as well. 

Right now we’re mastering a Jackson Browne album and making a CD master, MFIT master, 96k master, 192k master, DSD master and vinyl. That’s 6 different formats. Three years ago we made a CD master and that was it. That’s becoming more and more routine. 

I think this is all an offshoot from the phonograph record in the home. The fact that someone has to make a commitment to listening to a record and won’t be listening on earbuds but real loudspeakers is a revolution right there.

Do you have a philosophy about mastering?

Yes. If it needs nothing, don’t do anything. I think that you’re not doing a service by adding something it doesn’t need. I don’t make the stew, I season it. If the stew needs no seasoning, then that’s what you have to do, because if you add salt when it doesn’t need any, you’ve ruined it. I try to maintain what the engineer did. A lot of times they’re not really in the ballpark due to their monitoring, so I EQ for clarity more than anything."

Read additional excerpts from The Mastering Engineer's Handbook 3rd edition and my other books on the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Mastering Your Songs In 6 Steps

When I began writing the latest 3rd edition of The Mastering Engineer's Handbook, one of the things that I wanted to find out from some of the mastering greats was how they approached a project. In other words, what were the steps they took to make sure that a project was mastered properly. Interestingly, the majority of them follow 6 primary steps, some consciously followed and some unconsciously. Here's an excerpt from The Mastering Engineer's Handbook that outlines the technique.

"If you were to ask a number of the best mastering engineer’s what their general approach to mastering was, you’d get mostly the same answer.

1. Listen to all the tracks. If you’re listening to a collection of tracks such as an album, the first thing to do is listen to brief durations of each song (10 to 20 seconds should be enough) to find out which sounds are louder than the others, which ones are mixed better, and which ones have better frequency balances. By doing this you can tell which songs sound similar and which ones stick out. Inevitably, you’ll find that unless you’re working on a compilation album where all the songs were done by different production teams, the majority of the songs will have a similar feel to them, and these are the ones to begin with. After you feel pretty good about how these feel, you’ll find it will be easier to get the outliers to sound like the majority than the other way around.

2. Listen to the mix as a whole, instead of hearing the individual parts. Don’t listen like a mixer, don’t listen like an arrangement and don’t listen like a songwriter. Good mastering engineers have the ability to divorce themselves from the inner workings of the song and hear it as a whole, just like the listening public does. 

3. Find the most important element. On most modern radio-oriented songs, the vocal is the most important element, unless the song is an instrumental. That means that one of your jobs is trying to make sure that the vocal can be distinguished clearly.

4. Have an idea of where you want to go. Before you go twisting parameter controls, try to have an idea of what you’d like the track to sound like when your finished. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there a frequency that seems to be sticking out?
• Are there frequencies that seem to be missing?
• Is the track punchy enough?
• Is the track loud enough?
• Can you hear the lead element distinctly?

5. Raise the level first. Unless you’re extremely confident that you can hear a wide frequency spectrum on your monitors (especially the low end), concentrate on raising the volume instead EQing. You’ll keep yourself out of trouble that way. If you feel that you must EQ, refer to the section of the EQing later in the chapter.

6. Adjust the song levels so they match. One of the most important jobs in mastering is to take a collection of songs like an album, and make sure they each have the same relative level. Remember that you want to be sure that all the songs sound about the same level at their loudest. Do this by listening back and forth to all the songs and making small adjustments in level as necessary."

Following these steps just like the mastering greats do will ensure that not only will your project sound better, but you'll avoid some of the pitfalls of mastering your own material as well.

To read additional excerpts from The Mastering Engineer's Handbook and my other books, go to the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Mastering Compression Tips And Tricks

Many engineers overlook the attack and release controls on a compressor but they can affect the sound more than you think, especially during mastering. In the latest edition of The Mastering Engineer's Handbook, I outline what these controls can do when used across a full mix either during mixing or mastering.

"The key to getting the most out of a compressor is the Attack and Release (sometimes called Recovery) parameter controls, which have a tremendous overall effect on a mix and therefore are important to understand. Generally speaking, transient response and percussive sounds are affected by the Attack control setting. Release is the time it takes for the gain to return to normal or zero gain reduction.  

In a typical pop style mix, a fast attack setting will react to the drums and reduce the overall gain. If the release is set very fast, then the gain will return to normal quickly but can have an audible side effect of reducing some of the overall program level and attack of the drums in the mix. As the Release is set slower, the gain changes so that the drums might cause an effect called “pumping,” which means that the level of the mix will increase then decrease noticeably. Each time the dominant instrument starts or stops, it "pumps" the level of the mix up and down. Compressors that work best on full program material generally have very smooth release curves and slow release times to minimize this pumping effect.

Compression Tips And Tricks

Adjusting the Attack and Release controls on the compressor and/or limiter can have a surprising effect on the program sound.

• Slower Release settings will usually make the gain changes less audible but will also lower the perceived volume.  

• A slow Attack setting will tend to ignore drums and other fast signals but will still react to the vocals and bass.  

• A slow Attack setting might also allow a transient to overload the next piece of equipment in the chain.

• Gain changes on the compressor caused by the drum hits can pull down the level of the vocals and bass and cause overall volume changes in the program.  

• Usually only the fastest Attack and Release settings can make the sound “pump.”  

• The more bouncy the level meter, the more likely that the compression will be audible.

• Quiet passages that are too loud and noisy are usually a giveaway that you are seriously over-compressing.

Don’t just set those attack and release controls to the middle range and forget about them. They can make a big difference on your final mastered sound."

You can read more excerpts from The Mastering Engineer's Handbook 3rd edition and my other books on the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.