Microphone Test
Watch your level in real time, in decibels rather than guesses.
Runs entirely in your browser
Loading the tool…
Camera preview appears here.
- —Level (dBFS)
- —Peak (dBFS)
- —Status
Your voice, drawn
- —Noise floor (dBFS)
- —Sample rate
- —Channels
- —Voice pitch
Hear yourself
Records five seconds into this tab's memory, ready to play when you want. Nothing is saved or sent.
The browser's own processing
Calls switch these on. Turn them off to hear the raw microphone, then record again to compare.
What the camera can do
- —Delivered
- —Frames per second, measured
- —Lighting
| Capability | This camera |
|---|---|
| Start the camera to read what it reports. | |
Press Start and speak. The bar moves with your voice and the numbers beside it say what is actually arriving: level, peak, and whether the signal is clipping. The camera is not requested on this page, so no camera light comes on.
The figures are in dBFS, decibels below the loudest sound the system can represent, so they are negative and zero is the ceiling. Speaking normally, aim for a level around -18 to -12 with peaks staying under -6. Much quieter and the far end will strain to hear you; touching zero means the waveform is being cut flat, and no amount of turning it down afterwards brings back what was lost.
Below the meter the page draws what it hears: the last ten seconds of level against the target band, a spectrum of the frequencies in your voice, the noise floor of your room, and your voice pitch in hertz. The noise floor is the figure most tests leave out and the one that decides how clean a call sounds: it is what the microphone picks up between your words, from fans, traffic and the laptop itself.
To hear yourself, record five seconds and press play. The page does not feed the microphone live to the speakers, because that is how feedback starts. The recording lives only in this tab's memory. Record once with the browser's echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain switched on, as a call has them, and once with them off, and you hear exactly what that processing does to your voice.
Where several microphones exist the menu lists them, which is how to find out whether your headset or the laptop's own array is really the one in use. To check the camera too, the camera and microphone test runs both, and the webcam test does the camera alone.
How to use it
- Press Start microphone and allow access when the browser asks.
- Stay quiet for a few seconds so the noise floor settles, then speak normally.
- Aim for -18 to -12 dBFS with peaks under -6, well above the noise floor.
- Record five seconds and play them back to hear what a call would hear.
Questions
What is a good microphone level in dBFS?
Around -18 to -12 for speech, with peaks below -6. dBFS counts down from the loudest sound that can be represented, so the numbers are negative and zero is the hard ceiling. That target leaves room for a laugh or a raised voice without hitting it.
What does clipping mean, and why does it matter?
The signal has hit the ceiling and the tops of the waveform are being cut flat, which sounds like crackle or distortion. It is permanent: the peaks are not quiet later, they are gone. Move further from the microphone or lower the input gain in your system's sound settings until the status stops reading Clipping.
How do I hear what my microphone sounds like?
Press Record 5 seconds, speak, and press play on the clip when it ends. The page records rather than playing you back live, because speakers feeding a live microphone is how feedback starts. The clip is kept in the tab's memory only, and is gone when you record again or close the page.
What is a good noise floor?
The lower the better, and what matters is the gap to your voice. A quiet room with a decent microphone sits around -60 dBFS or below; a laptop with its fan running is often -45 to -40. If you speak at -15, a floor of -55 leaves forty decibels of headroom and sounds clean; a floor of -35 means the fan is in every sentence.
Should I turn noise suppression off?
For calls, usually not: it takes out fans, keyboards and traffic, which is why meeting apps switch it on. For singing, music or a podcast recording, often yes, since it can make a voice sound thin or underwater and it cuts off notes it mistakes for noise. Record with it on and off and listen to the difference.
The bar does not move at all. What is wrong?
Check the device menu first, since the wrong microphone selected is the most common cause and a laptop with a headset plugged in often has three. After that, look for a hardware mute on the headset or a mute switch on the boom arm, and then at the input volume in the system sound settings, which some conferencing apps turn down and leave down.
Is anything recorded or uploaded?
No. The stream goes from the device to this tab and nowhere else: there is no server here to send it to, no recording is made, and nothing is stored. The page has no network request of its own at all, and you can confirm that by disconnecting before you press Start, which changes nothing.
Why does it need permission every time on some browsers?
Because you are visiting rather than installing, and a browser only remembers a grant if you tell it to. Chrome and Edge remember per site once you allow it; Safari asks again by default, which is a deliberate choice on their part rather than something a page can override.
The page says it will not work from a file. Why?
A permission has to belong to a web address, and a page opened by double-clicking has none. Firefox allows it anyway; Chrome, Edge and Brave refuse before the prompt appears. On the hosted site this never comes up, since the address is a real one.
What the numbers mean
| Level | What it sounds like | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 0 dBFS | Clipping: the top of the waveform is cut off, heard as crackle | Lower the input gain or move back |
| -6 to 0 | Too hot: loud moments will clip | Turn the gain down a little |
| -18 to -12 | The target for speech | Leave it |
| -30 to -20 | Quiet: the far end turns you up, and the noise with you | Move closer or raise the gain |
| -50 to -40 | A typical laptop's noise floor | Fine between words, if speech is well above it |
| -60 and below | A quiet room, or a muted microphone | If this is while you speak, check the mute |
Where the input volume is set
| System | Where |
|---|---|
| Windows 11 | Settings, System, Sound, then the microphone under Input, then Input volume |
| macOS | System Settings, Sound, Input, then the Input volume slider |
| ChromeOS | Settings, Device, Audio, then the Input volume slider |
| Linux (GNOME) | Settings, Sound, Input, then the volume slider |
| iPhone and iPad | No input volume. Allow the microphone for the browser in Settings, Apps, then the browser |
| Android | No input volume. Allow the microphone in the browser's Site settings |
What the browser's processing does
| Setting | What it does | What it can cost |
|---|---|---|
| Echo cancellation | Removes what your speakers play from what the microphone hears | Clipped first syllables, and music treated as echo |
| Noise suppression | Removes steady background sound: fans, hum, traffic | A thin, watery voice; soft notes cut out |
| Automatic gain | Turns quiet speech up and loud speech down | Background noise pumped up in every pause |
Voice pitch
The pitch readout is the fundamental frequency of your voice, the rate your vocal folds vibrate. Typical speaking ranges are about 85 to 155 Hz for adult men and 165 to 255 Hz for adult women, higher for children. It moves with every sentence, so read it as a range rather than a single number; a figure far outside these while you speak usually means the room's noise, not your voice, is what is loudest.
The other device
The same tester pointed elsewhere. Each page asks for its own device and nothing more.
Your data stays on your device
Everything above runs inside your browser as WebAssembly compiled from Rust. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or stored on a server. You can load this page once, go offline, and it still works.
This page makes no requests at all, to anywhere. That is not a promise in the copy: it is a Content-Security-Policy header your browser enforces, and connect-src on it is none. Open the network tab and watch nothing happen.