I'm in Ojai right now and I bought a mastering facility.
It's one of the first original independent mastering facilities ever.
All this stuff is custom built by his brother Sherwood Sacks, all the great records that
were made in here with this equipment.
Everything is tubes.
I mean from the tape machine throughout the whole chain.
This is really history.
To be able to be the one considered to purchase this was a real honor.
Of course Doug had been fighting cancer for several months and then I got a call from
him one day.
He had just left the doctors and he was very tearful.
The cancer hadn't metastasized to his liver and other organs and the doctor gave him two
weeks of lucidity before he would go down for the final count.
So I told him I would come right up to see him, which I did, and he called me on the
way and said rather than come to the house please meet me at the mastering lab.
What was so interesting was the lab had been cutting some recuts of albums for Chad.
And one of them was a Linda Ronstadt album and for some reason one of the sides was giving
them grief.
And of course Doug had not been able to work for a while.
I thought that was pretty special because Doug was right to the end the consummate professional.
One of the reasons I really, really liked Doug Sacks, this man was totally devoted to
music as well as audio quality.
He had a research section in North Hollywood where he had a technician who would repair
things and wire up things and try things.
I went up there once and I'll tell you how important sonic quality was to Doug.
This is an audio cable.
These cables are called XLR connectors and they're used for microphones and studio connections
all over the place.
Well I went up there one time and Doug was actually listening to a test where they used
different brands of these cables and he was actually being able to hear the difference
between a certain brand or another brand and I was there for that test and I could actually
hear the difference between the one brand and the other brand.
That says something I know of no other audio engineer mastering or mixing or anywhere that
would audition pieces of electronic gear that were in the chain of recording that would
act, he would actually listen to them and judge the quality and if the quality wasn't
good he didn't use it or he found something better than the one he had he would change
it out.
Nobody I know has ever worked that way or done it to the degree that Doug Sacks did.
Well before we moved from Hollywood we totally redesigned the mastering lab console itself.
We kept the electronics but the control console itself was redesigned.
Then we went on to build lab 2 in the same building.
Doug was coming to Ohio on weekends just as a getaway and he found out he liked it so
much he thought he'd build a facility up here.
Even though we had built this place we kept the lays at the Hollywood division and in
2000 we retired the lays.
We took them out of service with the intention of never bringing them back again but then
everyone started buying vinyl again.
It was discovered by a whole new generation literally.
In 2008 we decided we needed a mastering room and that's when we brought the lays out of
storage and with Ed Huckabay's great expertise and design knowledge this room was built and
put together.
Now we're going to skip ahead a couple years.
Now it's 1974 my career is doing good.
I'm one of the most popular mastering engineers in the city of Nashville.
Well this producer has done a Whalen Jennings album and he comes by and he says I'm going
to cut it at every place in Nashville that's good and then I'm going to take it to the
west coast and I'm going to cut it at the mastering lab.
Well one of my competitors another mastering engineer called me up and he says we're having
a meeting of all the mastering engineers in Nashville.
We're going to plan on keeping that Whalen Jennings album here instead of having it go
to some place on the west coast.
So we all went out to dinner which was very strange since we were basically competitors
and we knew that this producer would try all four of us and then he would go to turns
out Doug Sacks at the mastering lab and I told the boys at the dinner boys I don't know
I buy a lot of records I listen to Doug Sacks's work I don't think we're going to win.
Well what do you know he tried all four of us in Nashville went to the west coast and
Doug won and I heard second hand that it wasn't really very close.
I've been mastering with Doug and with the mastering lab as far as I can remember always
his system sounded great very sweet very natural you could bring a tape in and if you had the
goods on it and you didn't need to EQ or limiter or anything like that Doug's system
was able to accurately represent that and then you know he could say well you know I can
take another step from here and not you know really change it but enhance it a little bit
and he would do that and sometimes we go with it and sometimes it wouldn't it all depended
on the quality of what we're doing.
But one of the things that always impressed me about Doug and the lab was his desire to
hear the best and to make the best I mean down to listening to different wires and
different connectors where he could hear the difference between a switchcraft connector
XLR and other kind of connectors did not have a patch bay so that he wouldn't have
any interruption of the circuitry to take a chance that wouldn't make a good connection
he always wanted the purest signal from point A to point B and as a consequence it showed
up and that never stopped even to the day that he drew his last breath he was always
in a search for the most true and honest reproduction of the sound as it came in.
The last two weeks of Doug the beginning of that time I met with him several times at
his house and he was he was facing the end and he asked me to get a hold of Chad because
Chad had wanted to purchase Sheffield and he wanted Chad to have it he he had talked
to me a lot about Chad I had never met him at the time but he had talked to me a lot
about Chad primarily I think because of him being so Chad being so into vinyl I'm thrilled
as I've gotten to know Chad here recently that he is very strong on keeping Doug's
legacy alive and is is going to do everything he can to uphold it.
Chad has the same passion and love for what he's doing that Doug did.
Chad has taken analog mastering and pressing to a new level he only gets original master
tapes uses the finest vinyl he presses the best records that I've ever heard and he is
going to keep the mastering labs equipment intact in total and have it up and running
again in the near future as his commitment to the analog sound.
I'm very excited that Chad has decided to bite the bullet and to buy the legacy of the
mastering lab and especially Doug Sacks and to acquire all the equipment and install it
in new surrounding but maintain the history and the quality and having it directly there
with the pressing plant is going to be very exciting because they'll be able to master
cut go right into the bath and plate and get test pressings and really have the quality
at a level that is really unobtainable anywhere else in the world.
We're going to try our best to get this priceless gear this one of a kind priceless gear this
is history we want to preserve this we want to keep the legacy of the mastering lab going.
Doug called me said hey Chad this is probably the last time we're going to speak he says
you know I'm telling people around here that I would really like you to own Sheffield labs
and I feel that you're probably the only person that I know that can treat it with the respect
that I have for so many years I just hope you're able to get Sheffield to have Doug
Sacks say that to you is very a big compliment and I'll try to respect his wishes and keep
the legacy going in the quality that he started.
