How important is low W & F performance anyway?

Audibility: Most listeners won’t notice wow and flutter below 0.25%, though sensitive ears may detect it at 0.10–0.20%.  Values above 0.25% are generally considered noticeable and problematic.

Therein lies my question:  How can a table such as DD1 have such lousy performance (0.8%) and still garner nothing but praise?

OP

"How can a table such as DD1 have such lousy performance (0.8%) and still garner nothing but praise?"

You had it, tested it, (lousy performance) but could you hear it?

I thought the bass was bloated, the opposite of tight like when you hear bass through the walls of an apartment (BOOM...BOOM...BOOM).  Other than that, I thought it sounded reasonable.  But I’m not a professional reviewer and my ears are not very good.

On DD1, the primary W&F response was the cogging at 88.88Hz which I'm not sure what that would sound like (vibrato?) and I certainly wasn't listening for it.  I actually didn't discover it until I increased the BW of the software to 100 Hz.  At 40Hz BW, it wasn't visible.

On DD2, the table came sans tone arm so listening wasn't possible.  The primary response would have been 13.33 Hz which should be within the most sensitive area for human hearing (wrt to flutter: 6-20Hz).

To an extent the answer to how important something like W&F specs are will be dependent on the sensitivity of the individual.  I use sustain notes on a piano for ear tests.  Using AnalogMagic my worst numbers according to my notes are for my old VPI HW19, and W&F is typically 0.10-0.13 which is not audible.  My SL1200GAE measures 0.06 and the HW40 is similar.  Most of the DD turntables that I have measured so far seem to be in the 0.06-7-8 range.  Elliott nailed it, if you can't hear it, it is not important.

Elliott nailed it, if you can't hear it, it is not important.

I would tend to agree, but some of the numbers are high enough it's difficult to believe that no one could hear it.  Depending on the amount and band of the frequency deviation, I wonder if even reviewers (and certainly the average listener) don't realize that they are hearing it or perhaps it is perceived as some sort of euphonics or "voicing".

A lot of the tools used to measure this at the retail level are inadequate IMO.  Most of them high pass filter the signal to remove record eccentricity effects & tone arm contributions and are upper BW limited, both of which will mask serious problems with the drive.