Abstract Acoustic emission (AE) study of steady and chatter mode peakless tool turning has been carried out in order to reveal an acoustic emission response to the workpiece chatter during fine turning. Molecular dynamics simulation of acoustic emission response to chatter was used to find out fundamental system characteristics. Experimental dependencies of AE signal amplitude, median frequency and power spectrum have been obtained and compared to those obtained from the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Both experimental and MD simulated AE signal spectral characteristics proved to be sensitive to chatter mode vibrations. Median frequency showed a drop in chatter mode cutting as well as power spectrum shifted to the low frequency range. Such a relationship has been attributed to the growing level of the system potential energy.