🎬Surround sound test

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

Surround sound test

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Click any speaker to hear that channel on its own, or run them all in turn. The subwoofer gets a 60 Hz tone because that is the only band it reproduces; every other channel gets 440 Hz. Web Audio counts channels from zero, your system mixer counts from one — the numbers here are the mixer's.

Channels the output accepted

—channels

Press start and the browser asks your output for six or eight separate channels, then reports how many it was actually given. If the answer is two, this page says two — a surround test that plays a stereo file with surround labels on it tells you nothing.

Device maximum—
Channels asked for6
Playing nowsilent
Sample rate—

Speaker layout

Output level

Try also

How do I test 5.1 or 7.1 surround?

The surround sound test asks your output how many channels it will accept, reports that number, and then sends a tone to one channel at a time so you can confirm each speaker is where it should be. Two means stereo, including every virtual surround mode, because those present two channels and do their work inside the headphones. Six means 5.1 and eight means 7.1.

The count is the provable half of the answer. A browser can address a channel and name it, but it cannot confirm the sound arrived at the rear right speaker, because it has no way to hear the room. So the page does the part it can establish and leaves you the part only ears can settle.

When the number comes back at two on a system built for six, the fault sits upstream of every speaker: the connection, the output configuration or a driver presenting a stereo device.

Start with the count, because it decides whether anything else is worth investigating.

Channels accepted	What it means	What to do next
1	Mono — a hands-free profile or a mono accessibility setting	Close whatever holds the microphone; check the mono audio switch
2	Stereo, including all virtual surround	Correct for headphones; on a home cinema chain, look at the configured layout, the cable and the default device
6	A 5.1 chain the browser can address	Play each channel in turn and confirm the position of every speaker
8	A 7.1 chain the browser can address	Same, plus the rear pair — the most commonly miswired speakers in the layout

The tone belongs to the channel, so what you are checking is the map rather than the sound quality. Three faults show up here and nowhere else: a surround speaker connected but never addressed, a pair swapped left for right behind the sofa, and a subwoofer that stays silent because the layout sends it nothing.

This is the only page here that deals in more than two channels. Left against right on ordinary stereo is the speaker test, and on headphones the headphone test adds the polarity check that catches a reversed cable. If the count itself looks wrong, confirm what the output is doing at all with the audio test, which reports the same device’s sample rate. When a surround speaker is addressed and still silent, work out whether it can produce the tone at all: the bass test for a subwoofer, and the frequency test for a satellite that may be rolling off before the tone you chose.

Frequently asked questions

Does Razer 7.1 or Windows Sonic count as surround?

Not as channels, no. Virtual surround takes a multichannel mix and folds it into two channels using filters that imitate how sound reaching your ears changes with direction, so the headphones receive stereo and the illusion is created inside it. That is why this test reports two on a headset advertising 7.1, and the report is correct rather than unfair — there are two drivers on your head. It says nothing about whether the effect works, which is a matter of taste and of how well the filters suit your ears.

Why does the test only see two channels on my home cinema setup?

Run through the four usual culprits in order. The system output may be configured as stereo even though the hardware is capable; an optical cable carries two-channel uncompressed audio and nothing wider unless the source encodes it; some HDMI paths through monitors and switches negotiate down to stereo; and browsers hand audio to the operating system’s default device, so a receiver that is not the default is never asked. Changing the configured speaker layout usually fixes it without touching a cable.

Do I need a 5.1 test file to do this properly?

A file is the slower way round. Downloaded test clips are decoded by whatever player opens them, and a player that does not recognize the layout downmixes silently, so a clip playing through two speakers proves nothing about the other four. Addressing a channel directly removes that step: the tone is placed on channel five and either the surround speaker makes a sound or it does not. It also removes the download, which is the part that goes wrong most often.

Where does Dolby Atmos fit into this?

Outside the count, because it is not a channel format. Atmos describes sounds as objects with positions and lets the playback device work out which speakers to use, so there is no fixed number to report and nothing for a browser to enumerate. A system running Atmos still exposes an underlying channel layout to ordinary applications, and that layout is what this page reads. Testing the Atmos rendering itself needs content authored for it, not a test tone.

Which speaker is which in a 5.1 layout?

The order is standardized, which is what makes a channel-by-channel test meaningful: front left, front right, centre, low-frequency effects, then surround left and surround right. A 7.1 layout adds a rear pair after those. If a tone announced as surround left comes out of the right-hand speaker, the wiring or the receiver’s assignment is crossed — a common outcome after moving furniture, and one that no amount of listening to films will pin down.

How the test works

The channel count comes from the destination of the browser’s audio output, which reports the maximum number of channels the current device will accept. That number describes the device and the system’s configured layout, not the speakers physically connected to it: a receiver configured for 7.1 with two speakers plugged in still reports eight, and a capable receiver configured as stereo reports two. Tones are generated in the page and placed on one channel at a time using explicit channel routing with discrete interpretation, which is the mode that moves a signal to the numbered output rather than mixing it across the pair; without that, the browser would helpfully spread a mono tone across every speaker and the test would confirm nothing. Channel order follows the standard layout — front left, front right, centre, low-frequency effects, surround left, surround right, then the rear pair — so the label on screen matches the position the format intends. The page reports what it sends and what the device accepted; confirming where the sound arrived is the listener’s part. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is uploaded.

Worked example

With channels the output accepted 2, maxChannelCount reported 2, channels 5.1 needs 6, this page works out 2 of the 6 channels. Your output is stereo. The browser reports a maximum of 2 channels, so there are exactly 2 to address and no page can turn that into 5.1 — a test that claims otherwise is playing you a stereo file with surround labels on it. Connect a receiver over HDMI, or switch the system output to a multichannel device, and reload this page.

Channels addressableLeft, Right
What 5.1 needs6 channels
MissingCentre, Subwoofer (LFE), Surround left, Surround right

Sources:

What a browser can and cannot prove about surround

The channel count is a fact. It comes from the output device itself, before any sound is played, and it settles the argument about whether the chain is capable at all.

Placement is not. Nothing in a browser hears the room, so which speaker made the noise is reported by you, not by the page. Every tool that claims otherwise is asking your ears too.

Virtual surround is not a lesser result. Two channels on a gaming headset is what the format is; the test is only there to stop you hunting for six speakers that were never in the signal.