🥁Bass test

✓ Tested & verified Updated: Aug 11, 2026 How the test works

Bass test

The steps go downwards and each one is lower than the last. Listen for the note itself, not for a buzz or a rattle: those are the speaker running out of travel, and a driver that rattles is being asked for bass it cannot make. If that happens, turn it down.

Lowest tone you heard

—Hz

This measures the whole chain — speaker, room and ears together — not the specification on the box. Small drivers fake low notes by distorting them, so a tone you hear as its own octave above counts as a no, not a yes.

Step now—
Steps answered—
Test level—
Wave that long—

Output level

Try also

How low do my speakers actually go?

The bass test walks down through the low frequencies and reports the lowest tone your system still reproduces, in Hz. At this end of the range the limit is nearly always the hardware rather than the listener: phone speakers give up somewhere around 200 Hz, laptops near 150 Hz, decent bookshelf speakers reach the low 50s, and going below 40 Hz needs a subwoofer.

Two traps make the answer slippery. A driver that cannot produce a 40 Hz fundamental can still produce its harmonics at 80 and 120 Hz, so the tone sounds present while the bass itself is missing — listen for a clean hum rather than a buzz or a growl. And below roughly 30 Hz, hearing turns into feeling: the sensation moves to your chest, the desk and the floor, which is a genuine result rather than a failed one.

Keep the volume moderate. Sustained low tones move a driver much further than music ever does.

The lowest clean tone places your system in a category, and the categories are wide apart. Compare against the hardware you own rather than against someone else’s result.

Lowest clean tone	What that usually is	What to expect from it
150–250 Hz	Phone speakers, conference pucks, most tablets	Voice reproduces fine; music has no foundation at all
90–150 Hz	Laptop speakers	Bass is implied by harmonics rather than played
60–90 Hz	Monitor speakers, small soundbars, cheap 2.1 sets	Kick drums arrive; the lowest bass notes do not
40–60 Hz	Good bookshelf speakers and larger soundbars	Full-range enough that most people stop noticing what is missing
30–40 Hz	A real subwoofer, or a large floorstanding pair	The bottom octave of most music is genuinely present
20–30 Hz	A capable subwoofer	More felt than heard, which is the correct experience

Everything here is the output side, and the low end specifically. If a tone is missing on one channel rather than at one frequency, that is routing and belongs to the speaker test or, on a pair of headphones, the headphone test. The mirror image of this page is the hearing test, which finds the top of the range where the listener usually is the limit; the frequency test covers both ends in one sweep and shows the gaps between them. To sit on one frequency and change it by hand while you move a speaker or hold a rattling panel, use the tone generator. If a subwoofer is connected but silent, check first that the browser can even address that channel with the surround sound test.

Frequently asked questions

Will a bass booster make my speakers play lower?

No. A booster raises the level of frequencies the speaker was already struggling with, and a driver that cannot move enough air at 40 Hz responds to more power by distorting rather than by reaching lower. What you hear afterwards is mostly added harmonics an octave up, which is why boosted laptop speakers sound louder and muddier without gaining any real depth. Bass extension is a physical property of the driver and the enclosure, and no processing adds it.

How do I test a subwoofer?

Play descending tones and watch where the sound stops rather than where it gets quiet, then check the crossover. A subwoofer only receives what the system sends it, so a receiver set to a 120 Hz crossover with speakers marked as large may route almost nothing to the sub while it sits there working perfectly. Put a hand near the cone at 40 Hz: movement with no audible tone means it is playing and the room or the level is hiding it.

Something buzzes at one particular tone. Is the speaker damaged?

Usually not, and the test for it takes five seconds. A resonance excited by one narrow band is nearly always a physical object rather than a driver: a panel in the desk, a loose grille, a screw, a window, an ornament. Hold the suspect object or move the speaker a few centimetres while the tone plays; if the buzz stops or changes pitch, you have found it. A fault in the driver itself follows the sound everywhere and does not care where the box is sitting.

Why do my headphones seem to go lower than my speakers?

Because they are sealed against your head and have almost no air to move. Speakers have to pressurize a whole room, which takes cone area and excursion neither a laptop nor a small bookshelf pair has; a headphone driver a centimetre across can reach 20 Hz because the volume it works into is tiny. It is a fair comparison of what you hear and an unfair one of the hardware — and it is why a mix that sounds full in headphones can arrive thin through speakers.

I can feel 20 Hz but I cannot hear it. Is that normal?

Entirely. Sensitivity falls away steeply below about 40 Hz, so at 20 Hz the level needed to hear a tone is enormous while the vibration reaching your body through the floor and the desk arrives long before that. What most people describe as hearing 20 Hz is a mixture of feeling the room and hearing the harmonics a struggling driver adds on top. If the sensation is physical rather than tonal, the answer is the honest one.

How the test works

Descending sine waves are generated in the page at a constant digital level, so the only thing changing between steps is the frequency and any difference you hear belongs to the equipment, the room or your ears rather than to the signal. Each tone is faded in and out over a few milliseconds: an abrupt start produces a click that contains the entire frequency range at once, and at the bottom of the range that click is easily mistaken for the tone itself. What the page cannot do is verify the result — no browser can hear the room, so the reading is what you were able to identify as a clean tone rather than a measurement of acoustic output. That distinction is the reason for the guidance about harmonics: a system with high distortion will make the fundamental appear to survive lower than it truly does, and the only instrument that separates them is a measurement microphone. Nothing is downloaded, no microphone is opened, and nothing leaves the page.

Worked example

With lowest step still audible 60 Hz, first step of the ladder 200 Hz, this page works out 60 Hz. The lowest tone you could still hear was 60 Hz, where one wave is 5.7 m (19 ft) long. That is the normal range for bookshelf speakers, a soundbar or decent headphones — the fundamental of a bass guitar (41 Hz) is still below it, but almost all music survives. If anything buzzed or rattled, that was the driver hitting its limit, not bass, and it is worth turning down.

Lowest tone heard60 Hz
One wave in air5.7 m (19 ft)
Bass guitar bottom string41 Hz — 8.4 m (27 ft)

Sources:

Why this number belongs to the speakers

The bottom of the range is a hardware limit. Ears vary far less at 40 Hz than at 15 kHz, so a low result here describes the drivers, the enclosure and the room rather than the listener.

Distortion is the loudest liar. A speaker pushed past its limit produces audible harmonics of a fundamental it never played, which is precisely why the result should be a clean tone rather than any sound at all.

The room is part of the instrument. Standing waves make bass louder in a corner and can cancel a tone at one chair, so moving your head half a metre is a legitimate part of the measurement.