Headphone test - check left, right and stereo
Headphone test
Is each ear working?
Press Play, then choose Left, Both or Right below, or tap a cup. Sweep glides the sound from ear to ear so you can hear the whole stereo field.
- Left / Right - heard in that ear only. Sound in both means a mono adapter, a mono accessibility setting, or a Bluetooth “mono” mode.
- Both - sits in the middle of your head. If it leans, check the balance slider in your system settings.
- Sweep - glides smoothly from ear to ear. A dropout or crackle on the way usually means a worn cable or plug.
How high can you hear?
Honest note: the result depends on your ears, your headphones and the volume together, so it is not a hearing test. Most adults stop hearing somewhere between 14 and 17 kHz and the limit falls with age; many headphones also roll off above 16–18 kHz.
Bass extension
Pick a frequency. Good closed headphones reach 30 Hz or lower; earbuds need a tight seal to play bass at all. A buzz or rattle means distortion — turn the volume down.
Very low tones are felt as much as heard. If 20–30 Hz is silent, that is usual for earbuds and small drivers, not a fault.
Is the centre in the centre?
Pink noise is placed at five positions. At Centre it should sit in the middle of your head. If it leans to one side, check the balance setting, the fit of each cup, or earwax in one bud.
Polarity (phase) check
- In phase should sound focused, in the middle of your head, with full bass.
- Out of phase flips the right ear’s waveform. It should sound vague and wide, “around” your head, with thinner bass.
- If the two sound the other way round, one driver is wired backwards. That is rare, and it cannot be measured from the browser — only your ears can tell.
Are left and right the right way round?
A labelled test proves nothing — told “this is left”, you hear left. This plays beeps into one ear chosen at random and hides every visual clue.
Put your headphones on, set the volume low, then press Play.
Start quiet and raise the volume only until you can hear the tone clearly. Test tones are pure and constant, so they seem quieter than they are — loud tones in headphones can damage hearing. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
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Three separate questions
People usually mean one of three different things by "test my headphones", and they need different checks.
- Is each side working? Play left only, then right only. Silence on one side is a cable, a connector or a driver.
- Are they the right way round? Almost nobody checks this, and it is commonly wrong after a replacement cable or a cheap adapter.
- Does each side sound the same? Sweep the frequency slider and listen for one side thinning out or buzzing before the other.
Why the channel check is blind
A test that announces "this is the left channel" and then plays it proves nothing - you have been told what to hear, and you will hear it. So the wiring check on this page plays into one ear chosen at random and does not say which. You answer first.
Getting it wrong is the finding, though it is worth repeating two or three times before concluding anything, since a guess is right half the time. If your channels really are reversed, the usual causes are a replacement cable wired incorrectly, an adapter, a balance control pushed to one side in your operating system, or simply wearing the headphones the wrong way round - easier than it sounds when the markings are small.
Reading the frequency sweep
The slider generates a pure tone from 20 Hz to 16 kHz.
- Below about 40 Hz most headphones produce very little and small laptop speakers produce nothing at all. That is the hardware, not a fault.
- Buzzing or rattling at low frequencies usually means a damaged driver or something loose in the housing.
- The top end is about your ears, not your headphones. Most adults stop hearing somewhere between 14 and 17 kHz, and that limit falls steadily with age. Not hearing 16 kHz is entirely normal and is not a fault to chase.
Protect your hearing while testing
Start with the volume low and raise it only if you need to. A sustained pure tone is more fatiguing than music at the same level, and a test of this kind is a poor reason to risk permanent damage. If a tone is uncomfortable, turn it down rather than pushing through.
Why the tones are generated rather than downloaded
Every tone here is synthesised in your browser. That matters for accuracy: an audio file has been through a lossy encoder, and the joint-stereo coding those encoders use can genuinely leak signal between the left and right channels - undermining the very thing a channel test is checking. A generated tone is exactly the frequency stated and is routed to exactly one channel.
Nothing is recorded and nothing is sent anywhere.
Related checks
Our sound test checks playback more generally, and the microphone test covers the other direction.
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