Sound and speaker test
Play a tone, tell the page whether you heard it.
- No permission needed
- Left and right separately
- Nothing recorded
1 · Play a tone
Other pitches, both channels
Starts at a third on purpose. A sine tone at full volume is unpleasant on headphones.
2 · Tell the page what happened
If you heard nothing, in this order
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1
Check which output is selected
Audio going to a disconnected monitor, a docking station or an idle Bluetooth speaker accounts for more silent computers than every hardware fault combined.
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2
Check the system volume, then the per-app mixer
Windows keeps a separate volume for each application, and a browser muted there stays silent while everything else plays normally.
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3
Unplug and replug headphones
A jack sitting halfway in leaves the computer thinking headphones are connected while the speakers stay switched off.
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4
Try the left-only and right-only tones
If one side plays and the other does not, the fault is a speaker or a cable, not the computer — and that is a different repair entirely.
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5
Restart the browser, then the computer
Sound drivers do get into a stuck state. This is last on the list because it is the step people try first and it rarely helps.
Speakers fine? The other half of a call is the microphone.
What this generator produces
Other ways to test speakers
| Approach | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Play a music track | A quick check that something comes out at all | Music is mixed across both channels, so a dead speaker on one side is easy to miss entirely |
| The test button in system sound settings | Windows and macOS both offer per-channel test tones | Buried several screens deep, and it tests the system output rather than the one your browser will use |
| A test video on a video site | Surround setups, where you need more than two channels | You are at the mercy of the recording, its loudness and its compression — none of which you control |
| This page | Isolating one channel at a time with a clean tone of known frequency | Two channels only: it cannot address the rear or centre speakers of a surround system |
When this page will not help
Where this stops being the right tool — and what to use instead.
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You want to test a surround system
Browsers mix everything down to stereo, so there is no way to address a rear or centre speaker from a web page.
Next step: Use the receiver’s own test tone, which cycles through each speaker in turn.
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You want to check your hearing
This is a speaker test, not an audiometric one. The result depends on your speakers, your volume and the room, which is exactly what a hearing test must control for.
Next step: A hearing check belongs with an audiologist. No web page can substitute for one, and this site does not pretend otherwise.
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You are judging sound quality
A sine tone tells you whether a channel works, not whether the speakers sound good. Quality depends on the room as much as on the hardware.
Next step: Use familiar music you know well, and listen in the position you actually sit in.
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Nothing plays anywhere on the computer
If every application is silent, the fault is the system output or the driver, and it will be silent here too.
Next step: Start with the output device selected in system sound settings — that single setting explains most cases.
Words you will meet on this page
- Channel
- One of the two independent signals in stereo, left and right. Testing them separately is the only reliable way to find a dead speaker, because music hides the loss.
- Sine tone
- A pure single-frequency sound with no harmonics. It is used for testing because anything you hear beyond the tone itself — buzzing, rattling — comes from the speaker.
- Output device
- The speaker or headset the system currently sends audio to. Sound going to the wrong output is by far the most common reason a computer appears silent.
- Balance
- The left-to-right distribution of volume. A balance slider pushed to one side mimics a dead speaker exactly, and is easy to knock by accident.
- Frequency
- The pitch of a tone in hertz. Small laptop speakers reproduce 1000 Hz easily and 220 Hz weakly, which is a physical limit rather than a fault.
- Clipping
- Distortion caused by asking for more level than the output can produce. It sounds harsh and buzzy, and it is why this page never plays at full scale.
- Audio context
- The browser’s sound engine. It stays switched off until you interact with the page, which is why sound only starts after a click.