Bass Test
Find out how deep your speakers, headphones, or subwoofer really go. Play a pure sine tone from 20 to 200 Hz — tap a preset, drag the slider, or sweep the whole range. Where the tone fades to silence is the limit of your low end.
Glides from 20 to 200 Hz — listen for where the tone appears, dips, or rattles.
Start around 50% and turn up slowly — loud low tones can bottom out drivers and damage speakers.
Sub-bass (20 – 60 Hz) needs a subwoofer or over-ear headphones — laptop and phone speakers physically cannot reproduce it.
Raise the volume slowly — a pure sine carries far more energy than music at the same loudness.
Below ~40 Hz a good system makes pressure you feel in your chest, not a pitch you hear. Silence plus vibration can still be a pass.
Buzzing during a tone is usually something loose nearby, not the speaker. Hold that frequency and track the culprit down.
Bass is where audio gear is most honest. A speaker can sound fine on voices yet produce nothing below 100 Hz, a "subwoofer" can top out above the sub-bass it is named after, and a loose port or panel only betrays itself when a low tone makes it rattle. Spec sheets rarely settle it — a driver can emit 40 Hz so quietly it may as well be silent. One pure frequency at a time removes the excuses: either you hear (or feel) the tone, or it is missing from your setup.
The tone is a mathematically pure sine wave from your browser’s Web Audio oscillator — one exact frequency, no download, no compression, no harmonics of its own. That purity is the point: if you hear anything at 30 Hz on speakers that cannot reach 30 Hz, you are hearing your gear distort (a huffing port or a bottoming-out driver), not the tone. The sweep glides exponentially so every octave gets equal time — watch the Hz readout the moment something gets louder, quieter, or buzzes.
Bass frequency ranges explained
| Range | Frequencies | What lives there |
|---|---|---|
| Sub-bass | 20 – 60 Hz | Felt more than heard — cinema rumble, 808 drops, organ pedals. Needs a subwoofer or good over-ear headphones. |
| Bass | 60 – 120 Hz | The punch of a kick drum and the body of a bass guitar. Most bookshelf speakers and headphones manage it. |
| Upper bass | 120 – 200 Hz | Warmth and fullness — the low end of vocals, guitars, and piano. Any working speaker, even a laptop’s, should play it clearly. |
How low should my gear go?
Small drivers cannot move enough air for deep bass. Roughly: phone and laptop speakers fade out around 100–200 Hz, desktop speakers without a subwoofer reach 60–100 Hz, good over-ear headphones reach 20–40 Hz, and a real subwoofer covers the whole sub-bass band. A laptop going silent at 100 Hz is not broken — it is a laptop. What the test catches is gear missing bass it should have: a silent subwoofer (check power, cable, and crossover), one earbud weaker than the other (worn tip or blocked mesh), or speakers that buzz instead of thump.
Rattling, buzzing, or uneven loudness?
A buzz on an otherwise clean tone usually is not the speaker — low frequencies shake whatever is loose nearby. Note where it starts, hold that tone with the slider, and hunt the usual suspects: shelves, windows, the speaker’s own grille. If loudness rises and falls as the sweep climbs even on good gear, you are hearing your room — standing waves that make moving a subwoofer half a metre matter more than replacing it. On headphones the room disappears, so an uneven sweep points at the headphones themselves.