AES Journal Forum

The Dynagroove system consists of a large number of different parts, all from RCA and all of which were implemented at the same time.  Olson's paper doesn't attempt to distinguish so much between them as merely to be an overall high level view of the recording chain RCA was using at the time.

Some of the things discussed in this paper, such as the use of peak-reading indicators to prevent tape overload, were incredible advances in technology.  Some of them, like the "dynamic spectral equalizer" which today we'd call multiband compression, were useful tools that has good and bad applications.  And some of them, such as the "dynamic styli correlator" which attempted to provide pre-distortion to improve tracking with spherical styly, seemed like good ideas at the time but in the end were complete disasters because they made assumptions about the playback system which didn't necessarily hold.

Still, this is a fascinating document, in part for historical reasons because it is a view into a real attempt to improve the technology of the day, and in part because it provides some basic philosophy on system design that holds years after the technologies were obsoleted.