Since this website is about mastering audio, I think it is appropriate to honor someone who I consider the first and most important independent Mastering Engineer.
Doug Sax was born on April 26, 1936, and died recently on April 2, 2015. He was the first mastering engineer to set up outside of a major label, and many would consider him the best in the business. (I am one of those) He started in 1967, and worked on albums every year through 2015.
His albums were the ones that others aspired to sound like. Many times I would listen to an album, think "this is excellent sound, who mastered this?" and look on the record jacket and see 'Mastered by Doug Sax'.
He mastered albums into 2015, but it was during the 70's that he really made his mark on recorded sound. Even though the equipment was simple and nothing like what we have today, he turned good mixes and average mixes into great recordings. The seventies is still my favorite decade for music, and many of his mastering jobs are the cause of it.
Look at his Wikipedia page for a partial listing of his work. It will take awhile to get through it.
And those are only a fraction of the albums he has worked on.
From the Doors first album in 1967, The Eagles first album in 1972, Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon,
Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, George Benson, Neil Diamond, Toto, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Diana Krall, Etc. Etc. up to Dolly Parton and Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan's latest albums, Doug mastered albums to the limit of their potential.
If you want to know what music should sound like in any particular genre, his work would be the best place to start. The albums were not compressed to death, it was all about the perfect EQ to best present the songs to the world. That is what mastering is really all about.
Thanks, Doug, for showing us the right way to do it.
Doug Sax was born on April 26, 1936, and died recently on April 2, 2015. He was the first mastering engineer to set up outside of a major label, and many would consider him the best in the business. (I am one of those) He started in 1967, and worked on albums every year through 2015.
His albums were the ones that others aspired to sound like. Many times I would listen to an album, think "this is excellent sound, who mastered this?" and look on the record jacket and see 'Mastered by Doug Sax'.
He mastered albums into 2015, but it was during the 70's that he really made his mark on recorded sound. Even though the equipment was simple and nothing like what we have today, he turned good mixes and average mixes into great recordings. The seventies is still my favorite decade for music, and many of his mastering jobs are the cause of it.
Look at his Wikipedia page for a partial listing of his work. It will take awhile to get through it.
And those are only a fraction of the albums he has worked on.
From the Doors first album in 1967, The Eagles first album in 1972, Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon,
Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, George Benson, Neil Diamond, Toto, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Diana Krall, Etc. Etc. up to Dolly Parton and Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan's latest albums, Doug mastered albums to the limit of their potential.
If you want to know what music should sound like in any particular genre, his work would be the best place to start. The albums were not compressed to death, it was all about the perfect EQ to best present the songs to the world. That is what mastering is really all about.
Thanks, Doug, for showing us the right way to do it.
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