Online microphone test
Press start, say a sentence, and see whether your microphone is working, which device the browser picked, and whether your level is high enough for anyone to understand you.
- No signup
- Runs in the browser
- Nothing uploaded
Check your microphone
Your browser will ask for permission. Speak a full sentence at your normal volume — tapping the microphone tells you nothing useful.
Audio is analysed on your device. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.
The microphone is not available
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How to test your microphone
- 1
Press start and allow access
Your browser will ask for permission to use the microphone. The prompt comes from the browser, not from this page, and the permission applies only to this site. If you have already denied it once, the browser will not ask again — see the section on restoring a blocked permission below.
- 2
Speak at your normal volume
Say a full sentence rather than tapping the microphone. Tapping produces a spike that tells you the device is connected but nothing about whether speech comes through at a usable level.
- 3
Read the verdict, not just the bars
The number on the right is your peak level as a percentage. Anything between roughly 25 and 90 per cent is comfortable. Below 25 you will be hard to hear and noise suppression will chew into your words; above 90 you are clipping and consonants will distort.
- 4
Check the device name
The selector below the meter shows which input the browser is actually using. If it says the built-in microphone while you are wearing a headset, that is the problem — change it there and the test restarts on the new device.
- 5
Record six seconds and listen back
The meter cannot hear a fan, a room echo, keyboard noise, or a boom microphone pointed at your cheek. Playback can. This is the step most people skip and the one that finds the real problem.
What the level meter is measuring
The meter shows RMS loudness — the root mean square of the audio signal over a short window — converted to a decibel scale and mapped onto 0 to 100. That is a mouthful, but the reason matters: a simple peak reading jumps on every door slam and makes a silent room look like 30 per cent, which turns a meter into decoration.
Human speech at a normal conversational distance, on a decent microphone with automatic gain enabled, lands somewhere between 30 and 70 per cent on this scale. A whisper or a microphone two metres away sits under 15. A microphone with its input gain set too high, or a headset boom resting against your lip, pushes past 90 and clips.
Clipping is worse than it sounds, because it is not a volume problem — it is a shape problem. Once the waveform hits the ceiling, the tops of it are cut off, and no amount of turning the volume down at the other end restores them. Consonants are the first casualty, which is why a clipped voice sounds loud and unintelligible at the same time.
The five reasons a microphone appears not to work
- Another application has the device. On Windows and macOS an application that opened a microphone in exclusive mode can leave every other application with silence while still appearing in the device list. Quit the conferencing client, the recording software or the virtual audio router you left running, then reload this page.
- The wrong input is selected. Plugging in a headset mid-session does not always move the selection. The browser, the operating system and each conferencing application keep their own choice, and they routinely disagree.
- The permission was denied. A denied microphone permission is remembered per site, and the browser will not ask a second time. It looks identical to a broken microphone from the page's point of view.
- The device is muted in hardware. Many headsets have a physical mute on the cable or an in-line switch, and a muted headset produces a perfectly flat meter with no error anywhere in software.
- The page is not on HTTPS. Browsers refuse microphone access on insecure origins. This page is served over HTTPS; a copy of it opened from a local file will silently fail.
Restoring a blocked microphone permission
| Chrome and Edge | Click the icon at the left of the address bar, find Microphone, and set it to Allow. Or open Settings → Privacy and security → Site settings → Microphone and remove this site from the blocked list. Reload the page afterwards. |
|---|---|
| Safari on macOS | Safari → Settings → Websites → Microphone, then set this site to Allow. Also check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone and confirm Safari itself is permitted. |
| Firefox | Click the padlock in the address bar, then clear the blocked microphone permission under Connection secure → More information → Permissions. Firefox remembers a denial for the session unless you tick to remember it permanently. |
| iOS | Settings → Safari → Microphone, set to Ask. Then Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone and confirm Safari is on. In-app browsers inside other applications often cannot request the microphone at all — open the page in Safari directly. |
| Android | Chrome → the icon at the left of the address bar → Permissions → Microphone. If the option is missing, check Android Settings → Apps → Chrome → Permissions → Microphone at the system level first. |
Getting a better recording, not just a working one
Distance does more than any setting. A microphone at 15 to 20 centimetres picks up your voice far louder than the room; the same microphone at a metre picks up roughly equal amounts of both, which is what makes a laptop microphone in a hard-surfaced room sound hollow. Halving the distance is worth more than any noise suppression algorithm.
Position matters almost as much as distance. A boom microphone belongs at the corner of your mouth, not in front of it — directly in front puts every plosive consonant straight into the capsule, which is the popping you hear on p and b sounds.
Rooms with parallel hard surfaces produce a flutter echo that no algorithm removes cleanly. A curtain, a rug, a bookshelf or simply not sitting in the middle of the room makes an audible difference. Speaking towards a soft surface rather than a bare wall helps more than it sounds like it should.
Finally, wired beats wireless for reliability, and a dedicated headset beats a laptop's built-in array for everything except convenience. Bluetooth headsets in particular switch to a much lower-quality codec the moment their microphone is opened, which is why your music-quality headphones sound like a telephone during a call. That is a limitation of the Bluetooth profile, not of your headset.
Testing for a phone call rather than a video meeting
A browser microphone test and a real telephone call have one important difference: the phone network is narrowband. A traditional call carries roughly 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz, which is a fraction of what your microphone captures and a fraction of what a video meeting transmits. Voice sounds thinner on a phone call for that reason alone, and no microphone fixes it.
What that means practically is that a microphone which sounds merely acceptable in a browser test can sound poor on a phone call, because the frequencies that were carrying the clarity are the ones the network removes. Clear articulation and a close microphone matter more on a phone call than on a video meeting, not less.
Telvio places calls over an internet connection to ordinary phone numbers, so it sits between the two: the leg from your device to our network can carry wideband audio, and the leg from our network to the recipient's telephone is limited by whatever their operator supports. Calling somebody's mobile in a country whose network supports wideband voice will sound noticeably better than calling a landline on legacy equipment, and there is nothing either end can do about the difference.
Bottom line
A working microphone shows a peak level between roughly 25 and 90 per cent on this test when you speak normally, and plays back intelligibly. If the meter stays flat, the usual causes are another application holding the device, a denied browser permission, or a hardware mute on the headset — in that order of likelihood.
If the meter looks healthy but people still cannot hear you in a meeting, the meeting application is almost certainly using a different input device from the one you just tested. Each application keeps its own selection, and they do not follow the browser.
Frequently asked questions
How do I test my microphone online?
Open a microphone test page, allow the browser's permission prompt, and speak at your normal volume. A working microphone moves the level meter and peaks somewhere between 25 and 90 per cent. Record a few seconds and play it back to check for echo, background noise and popping, which a meter cannot show you.
What is a good microphone level?
A peak between roughly 25 and 90 per cent on a decibel-scaled meter. Below 25 per cent, noise suppression starts removing parts of your speech along with the background. Above 90 per cent the signal clips, cutting the tops off the waveform and making consonants distort — which sounds loud and unclear at the same time.
Why can nobody hear me even though the mic test works?
Because the meeting application is using a different input device from your browser. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and your browser each store their own microphone selection, and plugging in a headset mid-session does not update all of them. Check the audio device setting inside the application itself.
Does this microphone test upload my voice?
No. The live meter reads the audio stream through a local analyser node, and the six-second recording is held in the page's memory as a temporary object. No audio is sent to any server, and closing the tab discards it.
Why is my Bluetooth headset quiet or muffled on calls?
Because opening the microphone switches a Bluetooth headset from a high-quality one-way audio profile to a low-bandwidth two-way one. The same headset sounds excellent playing music and noticeably worse on a call. It is a limitation of the Bluetooth profile rather than of the headset, and a wired headset avoids it entirely.
Does a microphone test work on an iPhone or iPad?
Yes, in Safari on a page served over HTTPS. It often fails inside in-app browsers — the web view that opens when you tap a link in a messaging application — because those cannot always request microphone access. Open the page in Safari directly if the prompt never appears.
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