Full Sound Check

Six quick questions, one at a time: left, right, balance, polarity, bass and treble. Each step plays a short sound and asks whether you heard what you should have. At the end, one summary says what passed, what needs a look, and which tool to open next — and, if you want, one more step checks your microphone.

Start quiet. Turn your system volume down before the first step, then raise it until the tone is comfortable. Every sound starts at a low level, but the site cannot see your volume setting.

Before you start

Sit where you normally listen, facing forward, and if you have two speakers, sit on the centre line between them. Moving off to one side makes the nearer speaker sound louder and earlier, which is exactly what a real balance fault sounds like, for a reason that has nothing to do with your equipment. With headphones, check that the left earcup is on your left ear: many are marked L and R on the inside of the band.

Close anything else that is playing sound, and turn off any audio enhancements your system offers — spatial audio, virtual surround, bass boost or loudness equalisation. Those effects change the signal on its way to your speakers, so a step can pass or fail because of the effect rather than the hardware.

How to read the results

Every question is phrased so that yes is the healthy answer, and the summary lists each step as passed or needing a look. A step that needs a look is not a diagnosis. It says what most often causes that result and links to the full tool that investigates it, which gives you more control than one question can: a tone you can move, a sweep you can stop, a channel you can pick.

The microphone step is optional and comes last. It asks for permission only when you press Start listening, shows the level as a relative figure in dBFS rather than a sound-pressure reading, and closes the microphone the moment you answer.

The results are not stored anywhere. They exist while this page is open, and reloading it starts a fresh check.

Two answers that are usually not faults

If the polarity step sounds the same both times, your device may play both sides through one driver. Laptop speakers, phones, soundbars and many Bluetooth speakers do this, and two identical-sounding polarity tones is then the correct result, not a wiring fault. If the bass step is inaudible on laptop or phone speakers, that is normal too: small drivers cannot move enough air to reproduce 80 Hz, and nothing is broken.

What this check cannot tell you

It cannot measure anything in absolute terms. The hardware in a laptop, a phone or a headset is not calibrated, so every result here is what you heard, not a reading. The treble step in particular is not a hearing test: if you cannot hear the 10 kHz tone, your speakers may not reproduce it, or it may be above what you hear, and the hearing range test explains how to tell the two apart. Neither this check nor that test can diagnose hearing loss; an audiologist can.