Press Start recording and talk: the bar moves when the mic hears you, then you hear it played back.
Press Start recording, then talk. You hear it back after.
Your browser will ask for the microphone. The recording stays in this tab.
How to read it
Four numbers, no verdict
Talk at your normal distance. Peaks between −18 and −6 dBFS leave headroom; 0 dBFS means the top of the wave was cut off. Then listen: your own ears are the judge of the recording.
Sample
Your microphone works, at a good level for speech.
Peak
−9.4 dBFS
Resting level
−52.3 dBFS
Sample rate
48,000 Hz
Length
6.2 s
quietgoodtoo loud
now loudestNot too loud
15.0 sof recording time left
Your recording plays back here as soon as it ends. Wear headphones or keep the volume low, or the microphone hears the speakers.
Microphone
Sample rate
Channels
Bit depth
Delay
Echo removal
Noise removal
Auto volume
Recording format
More options
What the readings mean
Your runs in this tab
No recording yet.
The recording stays in this tab and is dropped when you record again, hide the tab or leave. The code on this page uploads and stores nothing.
How this test works
The meter shows the largest sample of each moment in dBFS, where 0 is the most a recording can hold.
The recording is held in this tab’s memory for up to 15 seconds, played back through your speakers, and dropped when you record again, hide the tab or leave.
The microphone is let go as soon as the recording ends: it is never held open while you listen.
This mic test, a microphone test with playback, records up to 15 seconds from the microphone of a PC, laptop or phone and plays the audio straight back, with a live level bar while you talk.
Read the full guide
How do I test my microphone?
1. Press Start recording and pick Allow in the browser's microphone prompt.
2. Talk from your usual call distance: the level bar and waveform should move.
3. Press Stop recording, or let the 15 seconds run out. Playback starts by itself, so keep your speakers or headphones low.
Mic check: volume, input level and sound quality
The peak figure is in dBFS, where 0 is the loudest value the computer can store. Aim for Peaks between −18 and −6 dBFS. Clipping at 0 dBFS means the input volume is set too high. 48,000 Hz sample rate is full quality, and 16,000 Hz sample rate carries speech only. To hear the raw microphone, untick Call processing before you record.
Compare microphones with one fixed sentence: 'Pack a big purple bag, fine sign, safe face' exposes pops on p and b.
Picture next? The webcam test shows your camera with its measured frame rate.
Questions and answers
Is my mic working?
If the level bar moves while you talk and you hear yourself on playback, yes: the microphone, the browser and this site's permission all work. A bar that never leaves the bottom means only silence reached the page.
Why is my microphone not working?
A mic not working shows here as one of these: blocked for this site, no microphone found, found but would not open, or open and sending only silence. Each has a row with what to try.
How does the mic test playback work?
The page records up to 15 seconds into the tab's memory, then plays that recording, not a live echo. This page's own code never uploads it or writes it anywhere, and it is discarded when you record again, hide the tab or reload.
How do I test a headset or headphone mic?
Record once, pick the headset in the Microphone list, then record again. A wireless headset often sends its microphone over a mono speech channel, so it can report a 16,000 Hz sample rate and sound like a phone call.
Can I listen to my mic and hear myself as others do?
Yes: the recording plays back as soon as it stops. It holds only the sound of your voice that travelled through the air, which is what other people hear. While you talk, you also hear it through your own body.
All 30 rows
What the read-out reports 12
8,000 Hz sample rateThe telephone rate. Nothing above 4,000 Hz survives, which is enough to follow speech but loses the hiss that separates s from f. Record yourself saying 'fine sign, safe face' and listen. If the pairs blur together, the device is running in its narrowest speech mode.
16,000 Hz sample rateWideband speech, a rate common in internet calling. It can carry sound up to 8,000 Hz, and wideband calling uses 50 to 7,000 Hz of that, against 300 to 3,400 Hz on a traditional telephone line. Speech is clear at this rate and music sounds dull. With a wireless headset, see the headset row under playback.
44,100 Hz sample rateThe compact disc rate, fixed in the Red Book standard of 1980 and chosen to cover hearing from 20 to 20,000 Hz with a little room left for filtering: half of it is 22,050 Hz. For a voice it is every bit as good as 48,000 Hz. Neither figure describes the microphone's quality, only how finely the computer slices what the microphone hears.
Show all 30 rows (27 more)
What the read-out reports, continued
48,000 Hz sample rateThe standard rate of professional audio and video equipment, and the highest rate the Opus codec works at. Sampling captures frequencies up to half the rate, 24,000 Hz here, which is past the 20,000 Hz ceiling of human hearing. A 15-second test at this rate is 720,000 samples for one channel.
autoGainControl onThe browser turns the microphone up when you are quiet and down when you are loud, to hold a steady level. That squeezes the difference between soft and loud passages, and it means the level bar says little about the real input level of the hardware. Switch call processing off before you judge loudness.
channelCount 1Mono: one sample in each frame of sound. A voice microphone has no left and right to report, so 1 is not a fault, and the browser sends a mono recording to both speakers equally on playback.
channelCount 2Stereo: two samples in each frame, so a 15-second test at 48,000 Hz holds 1,440,000 of them. Expect it from an audio interface or a stereo microphone. If your voice plays back on one side only, the microphone is feeding one input of a two-input interface.
echoCancellation onThe browser is trying to keep whatever your speakers play out of what the microphone hears. It estimates the speaker sound and subtracts it, so that the far end of a call does not hear itself coming back. With headphones on there is nothing for it to remove.
Format: audio/webm, audio/ogg or audio/mp4The container the browser chose for the recording, because this page does not ask for a particular one. WebM and Ogg are open formats that carry the Opus codec, which can encode speech from 6 kbit/s upwards, and MP4 carries AAC. The page plays the recording in the same browser that made it, so whichever it is will play.
latency 0.01Latency is given in seconds, so 0.01 is 10 ms: the time between the audio being processed and being handed to the next stage. It is a target value, and the real delay may differ. It cannot be heard in a recording. It matters when sound has to reach someone live.
noiseSuppression onThe browser filters out steady background sound, such as fan noise and hum from equipment, before this page receives the audio. The recording is then cleaner than the raw microphone. Switch call processing off to hear the room as it really is.
sampleSize 16Each sample is stored as a 16-bit number, the same depth as a CD, which allows 65,536 different levels. In theory that puts the noise of the number format itself about 98 dB below a full-scale sine wave, far under the hiss of any room. Some browsers leave this value out.
Level meter readings 6
A level bar that never leaves the bottomEvery sample is zero, a silence that no real room produces. A track that has been switched off delivers exactly this, so look for a mute key on the keyboard, a mute switch on the headset cable, an input level of zero in the system's sound settings, or the wrong microphone in the list.
The bar flickers when nobody speaksThat is the noise floor: the room, the computer's fan and the microphone's own hiss. Note the resting figure, then talk. The gap between the two is what a listener gets, so a voice peaking at −12 dBFS over a floor of −60 dBFS (48 dB apart) is far cleaner than the same voice over a floor of −35 dBFS (23 dB).
Clipping at 0 dBFS0 dBFS is the largest value the number format can hold: 32,767 in 16-bit audio. Louder sound cannot go any higher, so the tops of the wave are cut flat, which adds harsh high harmonics. The lost peaks cannot be put back afterwards. Lower the input level in the system's sound settings, or move back, and record again.
The noise swells in every pauseAutomatic gain control at work. It raises the gain whenever the input drops, so the background is turned up in each gap between sentences, an effect engineers call breathing. Switch call processing off and record the same sentence again to compare.
Peaks below −40 dBFS while you talk−40 dBFS is one hundredth of full scale. The microphone works but is very quiet: raise the input level in the system's sound settings, move closer, or check that the list shows the microphone nearest your mouth. A call app would turn a signal this weak up, and the room's noise with it.
Peaks between −18 and −6 dBFSA sensible place for speech. −6 dBFS is half of full scale, and −18 dBFS is the level that European broadcasters line their equipment up to (−20 dBFS in the United States), chosen to leave headroom for sudden loud moments. Peaks in this band are clear, with room to spare for a laugh.
What you hear on playback 6
A boomy voice when you sit closeThe proximity effect. A directional microphone, such as a cardioid, exaggerates bass as the source comes close, and an omnidirectional one does not. Record the same sentence at a hand's width and at arm's length, then keep the distance that sounds most like you.
A distant, roomy voiceThe microphone is too far away. Every step back needs more gain to keep your voice at the same level, and the gain lifts the room's noise along with it. Halve the distance before you buy anything: pulling a laptop closer costs nothing.
A thump on every p and bPlosives. Sounds such as p, b, t, d, k and g release a puff of fast-moving air, and when it strikes the microphone you hear a pop. Record 'pack a big purple bag' to test. A pop filter, a screen set 5 to 15 cm in front of the microphone, breaks up the blast. Backing away helps as well, at the cost of more room noise.
A wireless headset that sounds like a phone callBluetooth carries music to a headset over a one-way stereo profile, which has no return path for a microphone. Microphone sound travels over the hands-free or headset profile, a single mono channel. Wideband speech, sampled at 16,000 Hz, is an optional extra of that profile, and without it the channel is narrower. For a fuller voice use the computer's own microphone or a wired one.
Silent playback although the waveform movedThe recording worked, because the waveform is drawn from the recorded sound itself. The fault is on the way out. Check that the sound is not muted, that a silent switch is off and which output the system is using, then run the speaker and headphone test to hear left and right separately.
Your voice sounds unlike youNothing is wrong. While you speak, you hear yourself through the air and also through your own body, by way of the skull and the sinuses. A recording holds only the part that went through the air, which is the voice everyone else has always heard.
When the microphone will not start 6
Microphone blocked for this siteThe browser answered NotAllowedError: you or a setting refused the microphone for this site, for this session or for every site. Click the padlock or site settings icon beside the address, switch Microphone to Allow, then reload the page. The same error appears on a page that was not loaded over HTTPS, because browsers hand out microphones on secure pages only.
Microphone found but it would not openNotReadableError: permission was given, and something at the operating system, browser or page level still stopped the microphone from opening. Quit call and recording apps completely, unplug a USB microphone and plug it back in, and press Start again. If that fails, restart the browser.
Microphone switched off for every appThe operating system has a microphone permission that sits above the browser's. On Windows 11 go to Start, Settings, Privacy & security, Microphone, and turn on Microphone access, Let apps access your microphone and Let desktop apps access your microphone. On a Mac choose Apple menu, System Settings, Privacy & Security, Microphone, and turn your browser on.
No microphone found on this computerNotFoundError: the browser can see no audio input of any kind. A desktop computer may have none of its own, so plug in a headset or a USB microphone, reseat the plug, and check that the input is not disabled in the system's sound settings. Then press Start again.
Start pressed and no prompt in sightA permission request may go unanswered for ever, neither allowed nor refused, and the page can do nothing until you choose. Look for the prompt under the address bar, behind another window or on a second screen. If you dismissed it, reload the page and press Start once more.
The wrong microphone at the top of the listBrowsers list the system's default microphone first, and this page opens that one. Names stay blank until you give permission, so the list fills in after the first Start. Pick the microphone you will use on the call, test again, and make the same choice in the call app, which keeps a setting of its own.