Bass & Subwoofer Test

Sweep the low end from 20 Hz to 200 Hz and hear where your speakers really start to make sound. Then use the kick to check how they handle a punch.

Hearing nothing at first is normal. Laptop and phone speakers barely produce deep bass at all. That's physics, not a fault in your speaker or in this page.

Subwoofer kick

Instead of a steady tone, this plays a short low thump, over and over. A steady tone shows what your speaker can play; a thump shows how cleanly it starts and stops, and that's where a loose port or an overworked cone gives itself away.

What this test can and can't tell you

It doesn't measure anything. There's no microphone involved and no calibration, and a web page has no way to know how loud the sound is in your room. What it does is play a known tone and show you exactly what it is, so you can listen and decide for yourself. "My speakers go quiet below 80 Hz" is a really useful thing to find out, and this is all you need to find it. "My speakers are 3 dB down at 62 Hz" is something no browser can tell you.

Where does your bass start?

Play the sweep and watch the readout as you listen. At some point on the way up, the sound will appear. That's roughly where your system stops being silent, and it's usually higher than people expect. As a rough guide: phone speakers may give you nothing until around 300 Hz, laptops often start somewhere between 150 and 250 Hz, and small desktop speakers tend to reach 80 to 100 Hz. A bookshelf speaker with a proper woofer might get down to 50 Hz, and in most homes only a subwoofer does anything useful at 30 Hz.

Below about 20 Hz there's nothing left to hear. That's the bottom of human hearing; what's left is pressure you feel, not a pitch you hear. That's why the sweep starts at 20 Hz.

Hearing bass vs feeling bass

Low notes work on your body as much as your ears. At 40 Hz, much of what you notice is in your chest, the desk and the floor. That's also why bass is the easiest part of sound to fake. A small speaker that can't move enough air at 60 Hz plays the overtones of 60 Hz instead, and your brain fills in the missing note. It sounds like bass, but it isn't. The sweep shows this straight away, because a pure tone has no overtones to lean on: either the speaker moves the air, or you hear nothing.

Tracking down rattles

Most of what people blame on their speakers in the bass is actually the room. A sweep sets off every resonance in turn, and somewhere between 40 and 120 Hz you'll often find a note where something buzzes: a cupboard door, a loose grille, a picture frame, a radiator, a laptop case. Note the frequency on the readout, run the sweep again, and put your hand on the suspect as it passes that point. If the buzz stops, you've found it, and your speaker is fine. Rattles like these come from the room, not the speaker. Speaker placement and room acoustics basics explains why bass depends so much on where the speaker and your ears are, and why the same speaker can sound completely different a few feet to either side.

Port noise is the other common find, and it's what the kick is for. A speaker with a port (the hole in the cabinet) can make a chuffing or puffing sound from the port itself when it's pushed hard, mostly on short thumps rather than steady tones. If the kick sounds clean when it's quiet but turns into a puff of air as you turn it up, the speaker is being asked for more than it can give.

Sounds distorted? Turn it down first

Bass is where amplifiers and speakers run out of room first, so a distorted low tone is much more likely to be a speaker at its limit than a fault. Turn the volume down and listen again. If it cleans up, nothing's broken. Loud, long bass notes are also the quickest way to damage a speaker, and there's no need for them: everything these tests can show you is audible at a moderate volume.

Not sure where the problem is? Run the full sound check. It's six quick questions, and at the end it tells you which tool to use next.