How to use the speaker test
- Turn your computer or phone volume down, and leave the Test volume slider at its low default.
- Press Left. You should hear a soft chime from the left speaker or left earcup only. Raise the volume slowly until it is clear.
- Press Right, then Both. With both channels the sound should appear in the centre, between the speakers or in the middle of your head.
- Use the other tabs to sweep the whole frequency range, check how deep your bass goes, and confirm your speakers are wired in phase.
- Under What did you hear?, which appears once a test has played, mark each test as Sounds right or Problem. Share result makes a link that holds only those marks (which of the five tests sounded right and which had a problem), not your volume or sweep marks.
Everything is generated live by your browser’s Web Audio engine. There are no audio files to download and nothing is recorded.
Left and right channel test
If the left button plays on the right, your channels are swapped: check that headphones are worn the right way round (look for the small L and R marks), or swap the speaker cables. If both buttons play from both sides equally, something is mixing your audio to mono. Common causes are the Mono audio accessibility setting (Windows, macOS, iOS and Android all have one), a balance slider set to the middle of a mono device, a phone’s single built-in speaker, or a Bluetooth speaker that only has one driver. If one side is quieter, check the balance slider in your system sound settings before blaming the hardware.
Pink noise contains every frequency at once with equal energy per octave, so it is the best signal for comparing the tone of two speakers: they should sound the same. The chime is easier to locate and more pleasant to listen to.
Frequency sweep: what to listen for
The sweep glides from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz on a logarithmic scale. Listen for three things: where the sound first appears at the bottom, any buzz, rattle or sudden jump in loudness on the way up, and where it disappears at the top. Small laptop and phone speakers usually fade in somewhere around 150 to 300 Hz; good headphones reach down to 20 to 30 Hz. At the top end, most adults stop hearing the sweep somewhere between 14 and 17 kHz, which is your ears rather than your speakers. The hearing test measures that limit properly. Use Mark this frequency to note the points you care about, or dial in any exact frequency with the tone generator.
Bass test
Play the fixed tones from 120 Hz downwards. A healthy speaker gets quieter smoothly as the frequency drops. If you hear buzzing, rattling or a “flapping” sound, the cone is hitting its limit, something nearby is vibrating, or the driver is damaged: turn the volume down straight away. Human hearing is much less sensitive at 20 to 40 Hz, so these tones need more volume to be heard. Raise it carefully, because this is also where small speakers are easiest to damage.
Phase (polarity) test
Both speakers should push and pull together. If one speaker’s red and black wires are swapped, it moves backwards, and the two cancel each other’s bass and smear the stereo image. Play In phase and Out of phase in turn. Correctly wired speakers make the in-phase noise sound solid and centred and the out-of-phase noise sound diffuse and thin. If it is the other way round, reverse the wires on one speaker only. On headphones, out of phase sounds strangely “inside your head” or on both sides at once. That is normal and shows the test is working.
Troubleshooting: no sound at all
- Check the output device in your system sound settings. Audio may be going to a monitor, a Bluetooth device or a disconnected headset.
- Make sure the browser tab is not muted, and check the per-app volume mixer on Windows.
- On iPhone and iPad, switch off silent mode and turn up the media volume, not the ringer.
- Bluetooth headphones can add a short delay and may switch to a low-quality “headset” mode while a microphone is in use. Close calls and apps that use the mic, or check it with the microphone test.