What each tone checks
Left and right confirm both channels are wired and working. Play them in turn with headphones on and check the sound arrives at the ear you expect. A channel that stays silent points to a broken cable, a bad connector, or a failed driver in that earcup.
100 Hz is low bass. Laptop and phone speakers usually cannot reproduce it at all, which is normal. On headphones or desktop speakers it should be clearly audible as a low hum.
1 kHz sits in the middle of the range where human hearing is most sensitive and where speech lives. If any tone plays, this one will. Once output works, check your input with the microphone test.
10 kHz is high treble. Whether you hear it depends on both the speaker and your own hearing, which loses high frequency sensitivity with age. Most adults over forty hear less at this frequency than they used to, and that is not a fault in the equipment.
Start quiet. Turn your volume down before playing a tone, especially with headphones. Sustained sine waves are perceived as louder and more fatiguing than music at the same level.
If you hear nothing
- Check the output device. This is by far the most common cause. Windows and macOS both switch output automatically when a monitor, dock or Bluetooth device connects, and audio then plays somewhere you cannot hear it.
- Check the browser tab is not muted. Most browsers let you mute an individual tab, and the indicator is easy to miss. Four causes of silent browser audio covers the rest.
- Check the physical volume. Many headsets have an inline dial that can sit at zero independently of the system volume.
- Try another source. Play any video. If that is silent too, the problem is system-wide rather than anything to do with this page.
Other checks
Common questions
Nothing plays at all.
Check the system volume first, then check which output device is selected. Browsers follow the operating system default output, so if audio is being sent to a disconnected Bluetooth speaker or an HDMI monitor with no speakers, you will hear nothing.
Both channels sound the same. Is that wrong?
On laptop speakers the two drivers sit close together, so the separation is hard to hear. Use headphones for a reliable left and right test.
The channels are swapped.
Check your headphones are on the correct ears first. If they are, the cable or adapter may be miswired, or a system audio setting may have channels reversed.
Why test different frequencies?
A speaker can pass mid frequencies cleanly while failing at the extremes. If the 100 Hz tone is inaudible your speaker has no bass response, and if the 10 kHz tone is missing, either the speaker or your hearing is rolling off at the top.