What Does Wow And Flutter Mean For Turntables

Аbsolutely, every connoisseur of a vinyl player should know all the accessories and nuances of their device.
Likewise, vinyl lovers should know what is wow and flutter. To unleash the full potential of your turntable, there are a large number of third-party factors that usually contribute 90% to creating high-quality sound.

All turntables, loudspeakers, and CD players support wow and turntable flutter and identify it as a quality sound marker. These two features help your recordings have a reliable pitch and remove distortion and hum.

What are wow and flutter

In many situations, flutter and wow are essential and are versatile methods for measuring sound quality and turntable performance.

Turntable wow and flutter can be heard, for example, when a recorded tape makes a distorted sound. It is also worth considering that these factors are not necessarily harmful since even brand new turntables emit wow and flutter, whether you like it or not. Often, listeners simply cannot pick up this sound if its range is less than 1/4 of 100%.

On the other hand, wow and flutter sounds can be incredibly unpleasant if you run into high values. It is best to avoid high deals ​​in the distortion area.

In addition, let’s consider that modern turntables that are a little short of premium ones usually have a vibration range of 0.10 to 20%. Thus, we can conclude that modern turntables have a very low level of distortion, which will certainly please the final user.

What impacts wow and flutter and how to protect my turntable sound

Both wow and flutter values ​​depend on the characteristics of your turntable and its power. Based on this, you can understand that older turntables often suffer from degradation of the effector wow and flutter.

It’s no secret that mechanical components wear out over time, and unfortunately, nothing can be done about it. In addition, power fluctuations also have a significant negative effect on the quality of the reproduced sound.

Solutions to the problem

One of the best ideas would be to invest in a surge protector. This unit is easy to find at any specialty vinyl store. However, the details differ depending on your device, so it may take some time to find them.

Finding a turntable that has better specs is also a good option. When choosing a device, focus on finding those that have certified protection against voltage surges and overload.