Mistracking

The phenomenon that occurs when the path followed by the read head of the recorder does not correspond to the location of the recorded track on the magnetic tape. Mistracking can occur in both longitudinal and helical scan recording systems. The read head must capture a given percentage of the track in order to produce a playback signal. If the head is too far off the track, recorded information will not be played back.

In ADPCM (adaptive differential pulse code modulation), the condition in which the internal state variables of the encoder and the decoder are not the same. [T1.310-1991]