A quick headphone check routine
- Set volume low, wear both sides correctly (L on left), and play the Left tone.
- Play the Right tone, then Both — the center tone should sit in the middle of your head.
- Run the stereo sweep and confirm smooth travel with no jumps or dead spots.
- Run the bass sweep — earbuds and open headphones roll off earlier than closed over-ears.
- Run the full 20 Hz–20 kHz sweep listening for rattles, buzzes, or one-sided dropouts.
- Finish with the phase check: in-phase should sound solid and centered.
Interpreting what you hear
One side crackles with cable movement
A broken conductor near the plug or the ear cup. Common on heavily used wired sets; replaceable cables fix it cheaply, otherwise it worsens over time.
Buzzing at specific bass frequencies
Use the manual tone generator to find the exact frequency. A consistent buzz indicates a damaged driver or trapped hair/debris on the diaphragm; sometimes visible under the ear pad mesh.
Center image feels off to one side
Driver sensitivity mismatch or partial blockage (earwax filters on IEMs). Compare with the balance slider centered in OS settings before blaming the headphones.
Out-of-phase sounds fuller than in-phase
One driver is wired inverted — it happens after cable repairs and on defective units. It smears the stereo image and weakens bass; a warranty or re-wire fix.
Related checks
Testing speakers instead? The sound test uses the same engine with speaker-specific guidance. Headset users should also run the mic test — a headset that plays fine can still have a dead microphone, and the two are diagnosed separately.
Headphone test questions
Put the headphones on the correct ears, set volume low, and play the Left, Right, and Both tones. Each side should be clearly audible and correctly placed. Then run the stereo sweep — the tone should glide smoothly across your head — and the frequency sweep to confirm both drivers cover the range without rattles or dropouts.
For wired headphones, a half-seated plug is the top cause — push it firmly home and twist gently while playing the affected channel; if sound crackles back, the plug or cable is worn. Also check the OS balance slider. If the same side is quiet on another device too, the driver or its cable is failing.
Play the Left tone: it must be heard in the ear marked L. Swapped channels on wired headphones usually mean the cable is plugged into the wrong cups (on detachable models) or the headphones are on backwards. On Bluetooth earbuds, re-pair the set — some budget earbuds swap channels after a faulty sync.
Most headphones reproduce well beyond what you can hear. In the 20 Hz–20 kHz sweep, expect to lose the tone somewhere between 12 and 17 kHz depending on your age and hearing — that is normal. What matters for the headphones: no silent gaps in the middle of the sweep, no buzzing, and both ears behaving the same.
Music and this test use the high-quality A2DP profile. The moment an app also uses the headset microphone, Bluetooth may switch to the hands-free profile, which drops audio quality sharply. That is a protocol limitation, not broken hardware — using the laptop mic while listening via Bluetooth avoids it.
Yes. Every tone is synthesized locally with the Web Audio API in your browser. The page plays audio only — it does not record, upload, or store anything.