Mic Test: Online Microphone Check

Test your mic online with a mic test that runs in your browser. Allow the microphone and watch its level move as you speak, then run the ten-second check for the noise floor, the level of your voice, clipping, mains hum and how high its sound reaches, and play back what it recorded. It works with a USB or XLR microphone, a headset, a webcam or a laptop's built-in mic, and nothing you say leaves your device.

Before you start: sit as you would on a call or a recording, and leave the microphone's input level where you normally use it, so the test reads the setup you actually have.

Press Start and allow the microphone when your browser asks.

Live microphone level

Peak
–
Level (RMS)
–
Clipped
–
You should see
The bar jump as you speak and drop back to a low, steady level when you stop. Normal speech at your usual distance should push the peaks into the shaded part of the bar, between −18 and −6 dBFS. The spectrum rises and falls with your voice, most of it below 4 kHz.
If it looks wrong
  • The bar does not move: pick another microphone in the list, check the mute switch on the mic or headset, and the input level in your system's sound settings.
  • The bar hardly moves when you speak: raise the input gain, or move closer. A laptop's mic is often set low.
  • Clip lights on normal speech: lower the input gain until it stays dark.

The ten-second mic check

Stay silent for three seconds while the page listens to the room, then read this sentence aloud at your normal voice, as you would on a call:

Sixty-six crisp sounds, a sharp hiss and a soft voice: this is my microphone test.

What good results look like

Level
Your loudest words should peak between −18 and −6 dBFS. Higher leaves no room for a laugh or a raised voice before the sound clips; lower means turning it up later, which turns the noise up with it. EBU R68 puts the alignment level at −18 dBFS, 18 dB below full scale.
Noise floor
The level in silence. At or under −60 dBFS the pauses between words sound silent; between −60 and −45 you hear hiss or the room in them; above −45 the noise sits under your voice the whole time.
Voice above the noise
The gap between your voice and the silence. 45 dB or more is clean enough for a recording or a podcast, 30 to 45 dB is fine for calls and meetings, and under 30 dB the noise is heard under your voice.
Mains hum
A steady tone at 50 Hz (Europe and most of Africa, Asia and Australia) or 60 Hz (North America and parts of South America and Asia), and at its multiples, is electrical, most often a ground loop between a USB interface and something else plugged into the wall.
How high it reaches
The s and sh sounds in the sentence carry energy above 8 kHz. A Bluetooth headset microphone in hands-free mode usually samples at 16 kHz, or 8 kHz on older headsets, so it stops at 8 kHz or lower, which is why it sounds muffled beside a wired or USB mic.
Channels
An audio interface with two inputs delivers stereo, and a single mic on input 1 arrives on the left channel only. The check says so when one channel stays silent while you speak.

These are rules of thumb for speech, read from the samples the browser hands the page: levels are in dBFS, not in sound pressure, and RMS is plain root-mean-square, so a full-scale sine reads −3 dBFS on it. To read how loud a room is in dB SPL, use the decibel meter; to tune an instrument through the same microphone, the online tuner.

What a browser mic test can and cannot tell you

A microphone test in the browser reads the same numbers a recording app or a call app receives: the samples the microphone delivers after your system's input gain, and after any cleanup the browser was asked to do. That makes it a test of your whole setup as it stands, from the capsule to the gain setting, which is what decides how you sound on a call, a stream or a recording.

Three readings carry most of the answer. The level says whether your voice sits high enough above the noise without running out of room at the top. The noise floor says what fills the pauses. And the gap between the two says whether the background will be heard under your voice. Hum, a muffled top end and a dead channel are the faults that show up most often, and each has a plain fix.

Everything is measured in dBFS, decibels below digital full scale. Full scale is the largest value a sample can hold, so 0 dBFS is the ceiling and every reading is a negative number below it. It says nothing about how loud the room is: the same voice reads higher with more gain or a closer mic.

The ideas behind the controls

dBFS
Decibels below full scale. 0 dBFS is the largest sample the converter can produce; a peak that reaches it is clipped, and the top of the wave is cut off.
Gain
How much the microphone signal is amplified before it is turned into numbers. It moves your voice and the noise up and down together, so it cannot improve the gap between them: only the distance to the mic and a quieter room do that.
Noise floor
What the microphone delivers in silence: the room, the computer's fan, and the hiss of the microphone and its preamp. It sets how quiet the pauses can be.
Voice processing
Echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain, which browsers and call apps apply to make speech clearer on calls. They change what this page measures, so it starts with them off and says when they are on.

Mic test FAQ

  1. What is a mic test?

    A check that your microphone works and records cleanly: that it is the input your computer or phone is actually using, that it picks up your voice at a level well above the background, and that your loudest words stay below the point where they clip. The ten-second check on this page also measures the other things that decide mic quality: mains hum, how high the sound reaches, and whether a stereo input carries your voice on both channels.

  2. How do I test my microphone online?

    Press Start mic test and allow the microphone when the browser asks. The level bar moves as you speak, which tells you the microphone works and is the one selected. Then run the ten-second check: stay silent for three seconds, read the sentence aloud, and the page reports the level of your voice, the noise floor, clipping, mains hum and how high the sound reaches, with a recording you can play back. If you have more than one microphone, pick it in the list that appears after you start.

  3. Is there a mic test where I can hear myself?

    Yes: run the ten-second check, then play the recording under the results to hear exactly what your microphone captured, at the level it captured it. The page does not play the microphone back live, because a live microphone through speakers feeds back into a howl. To hear yourself live, wear headphones and use the system's own monitoring: on Windows, Listen to this device in the microphone's properties; on a Mac, an audio interface's direct monitoring or your recording app.

  4. Can I test a webcam or headset mic here?

    Yes, the sound side of it. A webcam's built-in microphone and a USB or Bluetooth headset each show up as their own entry in the microphone list after you start, so pick the one you want and run the check. The page never turns on a camera, so it tests what the webcam hears, not the picture. A Bluetooth headset switches to its call-quality microphone, which the check shows as a ceiling at the 8 kHz band or lower. A headset with one four-pole plug needs a combined headset jack: in a computer's separate microphone socket, its microphone is not connected.

  5. How can I test my mic on my phone?

    Open this page in the phone's browser, Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone, press Start mic test and allow the microphone. The meter, the check and the recording work as they do on a computer. A Bluetooth headset connected to the phone switches to its own call-quality microphone, which the check shows as a ceiling at the 8 kHz band or lower.

  6. What should I say during a mic test?

    Something with the sounds that show a microphone's faults: s, sh and f for the top end, and your normal speaking voice for the level. The sentence on this page has all of them. Say it at the distance and volume you use on calls or recordings, and stay silent for the first three seconds so the check can measure the room first.

  7. Why is my microphone so quiet?

    Most often the input level is set low in the system's sound settings, or the microphone is too far from your mouth. A laptop's built-in mic is frequently set low by default, and a headset mic can be turned away from you. Raise the input level until your loudest words peak between −18 and −6 dBFS on the meter, and move closer before turning the gain right up: closer raises your voice without raising the room. An XLR microphone also needs the gain knob on its interface turned up, and a condenser mic needs the interface's 48V phantom power switched on.

  8. What level should my microphone be at?

    For speech, aim for the loudest words to peak between −18 and −6 dBFS, with normal speech below that. That leaves room for a laugh or a raised voice before anything clips, and keeps your voice well above the noise. The EBU puts the alignment level for digital audio at −18 dBFS, 18 dB below full scale. Peaks that touch 0 dBFS are clipped, and the distortion cannot be removed afterwards.

  9. Why does my mic only come out of the left side?

    Because the audio interface sends it as stereo with the microphone on one channel. A two-input interface delivers input 1 as the left channel and input 2 as the right, so a single microphone on input 1 arrives on the left only, and a call or a stream can then play your voice in one ear. The check names the silent channel when this happens. The fix is in the software that receives it: set the track or the input to mono, or choose input 1 as a mono source, in your recording, streaming or call app.

  10. What causes a hum or buzz in my microphone?

    A steady hum at 50 or 60 Hz, the frequency of the mains power, is electrical. The usual cause is a ground loop: the computer, a USB audio interface and a powered speaker or amplifier each connect to ground through their own power plug, and the small current between them ends up in the audio. Plugging everything into one power strip, running the interface from a laptop on battery to test, or a USB isolator usually cures it. A buzz can also come from a microphone cable running beside a power lead, or from an unshielded or damaged cable.

  11. Why does my microphone sound muffled or like a phone call?

    If you use a Bluetooth headset, that is how its microphone works: in hands-free mode most headsets send audio sampled at 16 kHz, or 8 kHz on older ones, so nothing above 8 kHz gets through and voices lose their crispness. The check shows it as a ceiling at the 8 kHz band or lower. A wired or USB microphone should reach well above that. With a wired mic, a muffled sound usually means it is pointed away from your mouth, covered by clothing or a desk, or that noise suppression is filtering it.

  12. Is my recording uploaded or saved anywhere?

    No. The microphone is measured inside the page by your browser, and the check's recording stays in the page's memory until you leave or record again. Nothing is sent to a server. Save the recording keeps a copy on your own device if you want one, and Turn microphone off releases the microphone straight away.

  13. Why can't the page find or open my microphone?

    The browser has to be allowed to use it. Click the microphone or lock icon in the address bar and allow the microphone for this site, then press Start again. On a Mac, check System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone for your browser; on Windows, Settings > Privacy & security > Microphone. If the browser is allowed and the page still cannot open it, another app such as a call or a recording program may be holding the microphone: close it and try again.

  14. Should I turn on noise suppression and echo cancellation?

    For calls on a laptop with speakers, usually yes: echo cancellation stops the other person hearing themselves, and noise suppression removes a fan or a keyboard. For recording, a podcast or music, leave them off and fix the noise at the source, because they change the sound of your voice and can chop the start and end of words. The page starts with them off so you hear the microphone as it is; tick the box to hear what your browser's processing does.