CBS Labs ASRA / QUASRA Vertical Limiter

[Phinster]

Does anyone who cut records for CBS in the late 60's to early 70's remember this gadget?

It had a bank of 3 Urei 1176 limiters as well as some hidden circuitry and
was used to control vertical modulation in Westrex cutterheads.

It was followed by the QUASRA for Quad SQ records and was designed by the late Eric Porterfield.

[mossboss]

Hey phin
We had cd4 cutter here for a while who I think mentioned it in a post but he cracked the shits with the RIAA rant and has not posted for a while now
Someone here mentioned that he is active in another forum around Edison early stuff May be you get on to him there wherever that is Sorry its the best I can do
Cheers

[philbrown]

Does anyone who cut records for CBS in the late 60's to early 70's remember this gadget?

It had a bank of 3 Urei 1176 limiters as well as some hidden circuitry and
was used to control vertical modulation in Westrex cutterheads.

It was followed by the QUASRA for Quad SQ records and was designed by the late Eric Porterfield.

I cut for CBS at the time of which you speak. Knew Eric, not well because I worked in San Francisco, but he came out several times a year.
We had ASRA, we NEVER used it. Nor the quad version. Never. Ever, Ever, Never.
Phil Brown

[JeffBKadin]

This is a pretty old post, I am replying to it in case anyone is still looking.
I was one of the engineers who worked on the Quasra, it was a very important device and it was not about Quad recording. The Quasra stood for Quadrature Compressor and was a specialized compressor that compressed vertical and horizontal channels equally. It was developed because it was discovered that recording engineers were compressing the Lateral (L+R) signal to keep records from skipping, or get more time on a record, but by not compressing the vertical signal by the same amount the stereo image was destroyed and moved with compression. This might have been a fun effect, but it was not true to the signal. The quasra was developed to alleviate the image issue and still allow for compression of the lateral signal.

[JeffBKadin]

I am working on a resume and was looking for a picture of a Quasra, if anyone has one I would appreciate it.

[Phinster]

We had the ASRA at CBS Whitfield St during the early 70's with Ortofon heads....patched it out most of the time
because no one there seemed interested in aligning the thing properly, or knew how...used to get bass boost where you
didn't want it...the Neumann's came along later and it got chucked...

[vinylman1948]

i worked as a mastering engineer at CBS Records and am quite familiar with the ASRA system.......please call me

Robert Honablue
Tel: +1-413-204-3493