How to use this test
- Press start and allow access. Your browser will ask for permission. Audio is processed entirely on your device and nothing is uploaded.
- Talk normally. Speak at the volume you would use on a call. The meter should sit in the green, peaking around −12 dB.
- Watch for red. Red means clipping — the signal hitting the ceiling and being cut flat. That distortion cannot be repaired afterwards.
- Record and listen back. A meter cannot show you echo, crackle or a loose connector. Five seconds of playback will.
How do I know if my microphone is working?
Press start and speak. If the meter moves, the microphone, its driver and your browser's access to it are all working — which eliminates most possible causes in one step.
But "working" and "sounding good" are different questions, and the second is the one people actually have. A microphone can register perfectly on a meter and still sound quiet, harsh or hollow to everyone on the call. The readings here are arranged to separate those.
Reading the numbers
| Reading | What good looks like | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Level | −30 to −6 dB while speaking | Current loudness, measured as RMS rather than peak — closer to what people perceive |
| Peak | Around −12 dB | The loudest moment. Above −1 dB you are clipping. |
| Noise floor | Below −55 dB | Hiss and hum present when you are silent. This is what gets amplified along with you. |
| Clipped frames | Zero | Frames that hit the ceiling and were cut flat |
These are dBFS — decibels relative to full scale — so they are negative numbers counting down from zero, where zero is the loudest the system can represent. Quieter is a more negative number.
Why clipping matters more than volume
This is the fault worth understanding, because it is common, it is easy to cause accidentally, and it is the reason most people who sound bad on calls sound bad.
Digital audio has a hard ceiling. When your signal exceeds it, the waveform is not made quieter — it is cut flat at the top. That flat section is distortion, it sounds harsh and crunchy, and it is unrecoverable: the information that was above the ceiling no longer exists, so no processing afterwards can restore it.
The usual culprit is not speaking loudly. It is a microphone boost setting — on Windows a separate +10 or +20 dB control, distinct from the main level — which many people enable while trying to fix being too quiet, and which pushes an already-adequate signal straight into the ceiling.
If the test shows clipped frames, lower your gain until peaks sit below −6 dB. You will sound quieter locally and considerably better to everyone else.
Why am I quiet, and why gain is the wrong fix
Sound level falls off sharply with distance. Doubling your distance from the microphone costs you roughly six decibels, which is a large amount — and crucially, the room noise does not fall off the same way, because it comes from everywhere rather than from one point.
So moving closer improves your signal-to-noise ratio, while raising gain does not. Gain amplifies your voice and the fan and the traffic outside equally. This is why the same microphone can sound professional at 15 cm and terrible at 60 cm with the gain turned up to compensate.
Practical order of operations:
- Get closer. Aim for 15–30 cm for a headset boom, or 20–40 cm for a desk microphone.
- Then set gain so normal speech peaks near −12 dB.
- Only then consider noise suppression, and prefer your call software's version to the system one.
Recording is the part a meter cannot replace
Levels tell you about loudness. They tell you nothing about echo, crackle, intermittent dropouts, a loose connector, or a boom microphone rubbing against your collar — all of which are common and all of which are immediately obvious the moment you hear yourself back.
Record five seconds, speaking as you normally would, and listen. It is the single most useful thing on this page and most people never do it.
A note on what we deliberately disable
This test requests your microphone with echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain control switched off. Browsers enable all three by default because they improve call quality — but they would also hide exactly the faults you came here to find. Automatic gain control in particular masks both quiet input and clipping by silently adjusting the level.
That means the readings here show your raw signal. Your call software will usually sound better than this, because it is processing what you see.
Related tests
If you can be heard but cannot hear others, the problem is output rather than input — the speaker test checks each channel independently. The webcam test covers the video half of the same setup.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my microphone not working?
Most often a hardware mute switch, the wrong input device selected, or browser permission denied. Headsets very commonly have an inline mute on the cable or a flip-to-mute boom that is easy to miss. If the test connects but the meter never moves, the browser is reading from a device that is receiving no signal — try switching device in the picker, and check your system sound settings for which input is set as default.
Why am I so quiet on calls?
Either your input gain is low or you are too far from the microphone. Distance matters more than people expect — halving the distance is worth more than any gain setting, because sound level falls off sharply with distance. Aim for normal speech peaking near −12 dB on the meter above. If you have to push gain very high to reach that, move closer instead; amplifying a weak signal raises the background noise with it.
What is clipping and why does it matter?
Clipping is the waveform hitting the maximum the system can represent and being cut flat at the top. It is not the same as being loud — it is distortion, it sounds harsh and crunchy, and it is permanent. No amount of processing afterwards can reconstruct what was cut off. It is the single most common reason people sound unpleasant on calls, and it is almost always caused by a microphone boost setting rather than by speaking loudly.
Why does my microphone pick up so much background noise?
Check the noise floor reading above. Anything above about −50 dBFS is high. The usual causes are proximity to fans or air conditioning, a 3.5 mm connection picking up electrical interference from the computer, or input gain pushed so high that it amplifies the room along with your voice. USB microphones generally have a lower noise floor than analogue ones because the conversion happens away from the machine electrical noise.
Why do I sound like I am in a tunnel or a barrel?
Room reflections. Hard parallel surfaces — bare walls, a desk, a window — bounce your voice back into the microphone slightly delayed, and the result reads as hollow. This is not a hardware fault and no setting fixes it. Soft furnishings, a rug, curtains or even a jacket on the back of your chair make a noticeable difference, and getting closer to the microphone helps because it raises your voice relative to the reflections.
Why does my headset microphone work in one app but not another?
Each application has its own input device setting, and they do not follow the system default reliably. Check the audio settings inside the specific application. It is also common for an application to hold exclusive access to the microphone, which prevents others from using it at the same time — closing the other app usually resolves it.
Is my audio recorded or uploaded by this test?
No. Everything is processed inside your browser. If you use the record button, the clip is held in memory purely so it can be played back to you, and it is discarded when you stop or leave the page. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored, and there is no server involved in the test.