Mic noise test

Stay quiet for 10 seconds, then talk for 8. You'll see how far your voice rises above the room and what's making the noise. Nothing leaves your device.

  1. Stay quiet10 s
  2. Read a line aloud8 s

Leave the room as it is during a call: fan, air conditioning and all. Just don't talk, type or click while we listen.

You'll see your room's level settle here, then your voice rise above it.

What this test measures

A microphone noise floor test in two steps: the room on its own, then your voice over it.

Voice over background

The headline number is how many decibels your speech sits above the room when you're silent. It's relative on purpose. Microphones and gain settings differ, so a raw level can't be compared between devices, but the gap between voice and background is what decides whether people on a call hear your room.

The background itself

The quiet phase is measured in dBFS (decibels below digital full scale) as a median, so one door slam doesn't move it, plus a low/high spread. A narrow spread means a steady source like a fan. A wide one means intermittent noise like traffic or voices.

What's making it

The spectrum of the quiet phase is checked for mains hum at 50 or 60 Hz and its harmonics (ground loops, unshielded cables), low rumble under 200 Hz (fans, air conditioning, traffic) and high-frequency hiss. A flat hiss points at the mic's own preamp, a shaped one at air conditioning or a vent.

Raw sound, or the browser's filter

The test asks your browser to switch off noise suppression and auto gain. If it refuses, which Safari always does, the result says so: you're then seeing what your browser lets through, not your room.

Reduce background noise
Found hum or rumble? Fixes for each kind, from ground loops to Zoom and Discord settings.
Read the guide
Improve your mic sound
Distance, gain and room treatment: the changes that make any mic sound better.
Read the guide

Frequently asked questions

The level your microphone records when nothing is meant to be making a sound: the room, your computer's fans, electrical interference and the mic's own electronics, all together. Every recording has one. What matters is how far your voice sits above it.
At 40 dB or more the background is practically inaudible: that's the gap audiobook platforms such as ACX ask for. From 15 to 40 dB you're fine for calls, though recordings will carry some room sound. Below 15 dB, the minimum classroom acoustics standards (ANSI S12.60) set for full intelligibility, the noise competes with your voice.
A browser only gets digital samples, with no idea how sensitive your microphone is or how high the gain is set, so it can't know real-world sound pressure (dB SPL). dBFS measures how far below the loudest possible digital signal the noise sits. That's why the page compares the background with your own voice instead of quoting an absolute number.
A steady hum at 50 or 60 Hz, the frequency of your mains power, usually comes from a ground loop, an unshielded cable running near a power supply, or a USB port sharing noisy power. Try another USB port, unplug the laptop charger, or move the cable away from power bricks. The reduce-noise guide covers ground loops step by step.
An even hiss across the high frequencies is usually the mic's own preamp, and it gets louder as you raise the gain. Speaking closer and lowering the gain improves the ratio. A hiss that rises and falls, or has a tone to it, is more often air conditioning or a computer fan.
It tells you whether your browser's noise suppression was on: every result carries a "Raw sound" or "Browser noise filter on" badge. The page asks for raw sound, so a raw result shows your room as the mic hears it, before any filter. Apps like Zoom, Teams and Discord add their own suppression on top, which this page can't see.
Some browsers, Safari on iPhone, iPad and Mac among them, don't let a page disable their voice processing. The measurement then shows the background after the browser has already cleaned it, which looks quieter than your room really is. Use Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer for a raw reading.
No. The analysis runs in your browser while you're on the page. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.