Wow and flutter measurement

Measurement of wow and flutter is carried out on audio tape machines, cassette recorders and players, and other analog recording and reproduction devices with rotary components (e.g. movie projectors, turntables (vinyl recording), etc.) This measurement quantifies the amount of 'frequency wobble' (caused by speed fluctuations) present in subjectively valid terms. Turntables tend to suffer mainly slow wow. In digital systems, which are locked to crystal oscillators, variations in clock timing are referred to as wander or jitter, depending on speed.

While the terms wow and flutter used to be used separately (for wobbles at a rate below and above 4 Hz respectively), they tend to be combined now that universal standards exist for measurement which take both into account simultaneously. Listeners find flutter most objectionable when the actual frequency of wobble is 4 Hz, and less audible above and below this rate. This fact forms the basis for the weighting curve shown here. The weighting curve is misleading, inasmuch as it presumes inaudibility of flutters above 200 Hz, when actually faster flutters are quite damaging to the sound. A flutter of 200 Hz at a level of -50db will create 0.3% intermodulation distortion, which would be considered unacceptable in a preamp or amplifier.

Measuring instruments use a frequency discriminator to translate the pitch variations of a recorded tone into a flutter waveform, which is then passed through the weighting filter, before being full-wave rectified to produce a slowly varying signal which drives a meter or recording device. The maximum meter indication should be read as the flutter value.

The following standards all specify the weighting filter shown above, together with a special slow-quasi-peak full-wave rectifier designed to register any brief speed excursions. As with many audio standards these are identical derivatives of a common specification.

Measurement is usually made on a 3.15 kHz (or sometimes 3 kHz) tone, a frequency chosen because it is high enough to give good resolution, but low enough not to be affected by drop-outs and high-frequency losses. Ideally, flutter should be measured using a pre-recorded tone free from flutter. Record-replay flutter will then be around twice as high, because worst case variations will add from time to time. When a recording is played back on the same machine it was made on, a very slow change from low to high flutter will often be observed, because any cyclic flutter caused by capstan rotation may go from adding to cancelling as the tape slips slightly out of synchronism. A good technique is to stop the tape from time to time and start it again, as this will often result in different readings as the correlation between record and playback flutter shifts. On high-end or most professional machines in a well maintained state, one may expect that it is impractical to not possible to find a tape made on a better machine. Therefore, a record-playback test using the stop-start technique, is, for practical purposes, the best that can be accomplished.

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