Turntable speed accuracy


There is another thread (about the NVS table) which has a subordinate discussion about turntable speed accuracy and different methods of checking. Some suggest using the Timeline laser, others use a strobe disk.

I assume everyone agrees that speed accuracy is of utmost importance. What is the best way to verify results? What is the most speed-accurate drive method? And is speed accuracy really the most important consideration for proper turntable design or are there some compromises with certain drive types that make others still viable?
peterayer
I like and use a digital tachometer for checking speed accuracy. I've tried strobe discs but like the tach more.
Post removed 
I have the Kab strobe disc and laser pointer which I have used reliably for the last two years and I have now just obtained the Sutherland Timeline laser weight.
The Timeline demonstrates that the Kab strode is merely an 'approximation' of correct speed.....or at least is not capable of detecting instantaneous 'stylus drag' which is clearly visible with the Timeline.
I can assure anyone......that once you have heard a record played without stylus drag.......speed constancy will become an important factor in your vinyl experience :^)
What Viridian said and Halcro hinted at. More important is stable speed regardless of groove modulation, as opposed to bang on 33.33 rpm. If a table can stay at 32 rpm whilst tracking any and all passages, then it could probably be adjusted to run stably at 33 rpm, so absolute speed is less of an issue, IMO. I read a very insightful piece somewhere on the internet last week which pointed out that the turntable provides fully "half" the music, as its speed past the stylus provides the horizontal axis of the complex sine waves that represent music, if it were graphically displayed for example with an oscilloscope. The cartridge can only give us the other half, the vertical or amplitude direction. All musical timing must come from the tt. Pretty sobering, eh? Well, I knew that, but I had never thought of it that way.
Quite right Lew.
It really doesn't matter if your TT is revolving at 32.4rpm or 33.3rpm (other than pitch)......as long as it it is unwavering!
And that article you read was the one I posted by Peter Moncreif of the IAR. It was like a thunderbolt for me. The man is a real thinker :^)......in a field where there are some stinkers :^(