Test your speakers and headphones, left and right

Press Left, Right or Both and a 2-second tone plays only on that side, so you can confirm in a few seconds that each speaker or earbud works and that left and right are not swapped.

Live demo · real result from this tool
440 Hz test tone

Turn your volume down before you press play.

Processed on your device — nothing is uploaded.

How to use the speaker tester

  1. Turn your device volume down, as the tool reminds you.
  2. Press ◀ Left. A tone plays for 2 seconds on the left side only. The button reads Stop while it plays.
  3. Press Right ▶, then Both. With both, the sound should seem to come from the middle.
  4. Change Tone (20–20,000 Hz, default 440) or Level (1–60%, default 20%) and test again.
  5. To keep a test file, set Channel and press Export test file. You get a 2-second stereo WAV to play on another device.

What it does and when to use it

Use it when you set up new speakers or a soundbar, before an online meeting, after pairing Bluetooth earbuds, when one earbud seems quieter, or when a game’s surround sound feels wrong. A left/right test takes seconds and rules out the most common faults: a dead side, swapped channels, or a balance setting pushed to one side.

The exported WAV is handy for car stereos, TVs or media players where you cannot open a web page. Copy it over and play it there.

Once output works, check the other direction with the microphone tester. For a continuous tone at any pitch and waveform, use the tone generator. To find the highest pitch you can hear, try the hearing test.

How it works

The live tones are made by your browser’s Web Audio engine on your device; nothing is downloaded or uploaded. For each button the tool builds a two-channel sine tone 2 s long, with 50 ms fades at its ends, and puts silence in the other channel. A gain stage ramps up over 30 ms so there is no click, and changing Level while it plays glides the volume. Export test file runs the same generator and writes a 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo WAV.

Worked examples

From the tool’s own export:

  • Channel Left, defaults: speaker-test-left-440hz.wav, 2 s, 344.6 KB. Only the left channel has sound.
  • Channel Right, Tone 1000: speaker-test-right-1000hz.wav. A 1 kHz tone is easy to locate and is a common reference pitch.
  • Channel Both, Tone 100: speaker-test-both-100hz.wav, useful for checking whether small speakers produce any bass at all.

Limits and tips

  • This checks left and right only. It does not test surround (5.1 or 7.1) channels.
  • A tone sounding the same on both sides does not prove good quality; play some music you know well for that.
  • Bluetooth “hands-free” mode during calls is often mono, so left and right may sound identical while a call is active.
  • The Channel field only affects the exported file. The live test uses the three buttons.

Frequently asked questions

I pressed Left but heard it on the right. What is wrong?
The channels are swapped somewhere: headphones worn the wrong way round, speakers plugged into the wrong outputs, or a balance or 'swap channels' setting in your system or sound app. Fix it there, then test again.
I hear nothing at all. What should I check?
Check that the right output device is selected in your system's sound settings, that the tab is not muted, and that a Bluetooth device is connected. Some browsers block sound until you click on the page; pressing a button counts as that click.
Why is a very low or very high tone quiet or silent?
Small laptop and phone speakers cannot reproduce deep bass, so 20–60 Hz may be almost silent on them. Very high tones may simply be beyond your hearing, which loses the top end with age.
Is the default level safe?
The Level slider starts at 20% and stops at 60%, and each tone fades in and out. Your device volume still decides how loud it really is, so turn it down before the first test, especially with headphones.

How do we know nothing is uploaded? Test it yourself on the privacy proof page.

Written by the ToolsRift team · Last updated

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