Performance & Troubleshooting

Once your turntable is set up correctly, these four guides teach you to listen analytically — to recognise specific problems by what they sound like, understand their physical cause, and know what the realistic fixes are. Wow and flutter are pitch instability at different frequencies: wow is slow and audible on sustained piano or voice, flutter is faster and shows up as a roughness on sibilants. Both are measurable with a test record and a spectrum analyser app, and both reveal something real about platter bearing quality, drive system design, and motor isolation.

Rumble is low-frequency noise generated by the bearing and motor — below 20Hz in severe cases, but with harmonics that can reach into audible territory and add a subtle muddiness to bass. Good decks filter or mechanically isolate it. Cheaper decks don't, and the difference is audible on quiet passages with a well-designed phono stage. The rumble guide explains what you're actually hearing and what specifications to look for when comparing decks.

Inner groove distortion is the one problem that improves purely with better alignment and a better stylus — not a more expensive turntable. It's caused by the reducing groove velocity as the stylus tracks toward the centre of the record, compressing the physical groove modulations and making them harder to trace accurately. A line-contact or Shibata stylus combined with precise alignment reduces it dramatically. The isolation guide closes the loop on everything: vibration management is the one variable that affects all the others.