Speaker Phase Test — are your speakers in phase?

Test your speakers

Sit between your speakers, or put on headphones, and tap a test to play it, again to pause. In phase should sound solid and centred; out of phase sounds hollow and hard to place, and its bass thins out.

What phase means for speakers

Two speakers playing the same sound should push and pull the air together. If one is wired with its plus and minus swapped, it pulls while the other pushes: the sound is out of phase. Low frequencies, whose waves are long, cancel each other in the room, and the image loses its centre.

Play the in-phase test, then the out-of-phase one. If the in-phase one sounds hollower or weaker in the bass, your speakers are probably out of phase: swap the two wires on one speaker, at the speaker or the amplifier, and test again.

Facts that often get mixed up

Strictly, a swapped wire inverts polarity, not phase; phase depends on frequency and time. In everyday use, in phase and out of phase mean polarity.
On headphones an out-of-phase sound feels as if it comes from inside or behind your head, rather than from a place in front.
A left-right test checks which channel is which; it cannot reveal reversed wiring, because a single speaker sounds the same either way.
Mixing engineers check a song in mono: anything out of phase between the channels shrinks or vanishes when they are added together.

Test	Correct speakers	One speaker reversed
In phase	Solid, centred, full	Hollow, diffuse, thin bass
Out of phase	Hollow, diffuse, thin bass	Solid and centred
Left / right only	From the matching side	From the matching side
Bass in phase (80 Hz)	Strong, even	Weak
Bass out of phase (80 Hz)	Weak, nearly gone	Strong

How do I know if my speakers are out of phase?

Play the in-phase and out-of-phase tests. Correctly wired speakers sound solid and centred on the in-phase test; if the out-of-phase test sounds fuller, one speaker is reversed.

How do I fix speakers that are out of phase?

On one speaker only, swap its two wires (red and black, or plus and minus), either at the speaker or at the amplifier, then test again.

Does this work with headphones?

Yes. Out of phase sounds strange on headphones, as if inside your head, so you can check that a headphone cable or adapter is wired correctly.

Mixes

Pick what you need. One tap to start, change anything and save it as your own.

Focus timer

Work in waves.

The Pomodoro rhythm: focus with calm sound in your ears, then take a real break. A soft bell marks every change, so you never watch the clock. Every fourth break is a long one.

25:00Focus · 1 of 4

Silence during breaks

Sound while you work

Breathe

Slow your breathing down.

Follow the circle and the sound: it rises as you breathe in and falls as you breathe out. Choose a rhythm, or set your own, and pick what plays underneath.

Ready

Sound while you breathe

Noise generator

Any color of noise, from deep brown to bright violet — and everything in between.

Brown noise

Noise volume

Spectrum · 20 Hz – 20 kHz

Sound science

The colors of noise

Same randomness, different tilt. Each color shifts energy between low and high pitches — here is what that sounds like.

White

0 dB / octave

Equal energy at every frequency. Because we hear in octaves, it sounds bright and hissy — the classic "TV static".

Pink

−3 dB / octave

Equal energy in every octave, so it sounds even to the ear. Steady rain, rustling leaves. A favorite for focus.

Brown

−6 dB / octave

Deep and warm, like a distant waterfall or a plane cabin. Masks voices and traffic without any hiss.

Grey

Equal-loudness curve

Shaped around how our hearing works, so every pitch seems equally loud. Balanced and soft.

Blue

+3 dB / octave

The mirror of pink: more treble than bass. Airy, crisp, like a light spray.

Violet

+6 dB / octave

Mostly treble, like hissing water. Sometimes used to mask high-pitched ringing.

Calm

Gentle tones to settle into: singing bowls, a slow warm drone, wind chimes tuned so every note fits.

Frequencies

Famous tones on pages of their own: hear them side by side, with honest facts.

Sound phenomena

How sound bends, shifts, rings and fools the ear, and why space is silent: hear it for yourself.

Nature

Rooms & travel

Animals & countryside

A purring cat, whales and dolphins, a nightingale in the dark, cowbells on a summer pasture. Wonderful in stereo.

For babies

Womb sounds are what a baby heard for nine months: a deep rush of blood flow, and the heartbeat.

Hearing and speaker tests

Check your ears, headphones and speakers, each test on a page of its own with a live picture.

Ear Age · 60 seconds

Test your ears.

Our ears lose the highest pitches first, and it starts early. Find the highest tone you can still hear and see the typical age for it.

Headphones on, quiet room
Set a comfortable volume on the 1 kHz tone
Don't turn it up when a tone disappears — that's the point

20,000Hz

Can you still hear it?

Hearing age test →

More ear tests

Check your headphones, find the deepest bass your setup can play, or play any pitch you like.

Headphones check

Left & right

Each ear should get its own side. It matters for 8D, binaural beats and every stereo sound here.

Headphones on, then tap a side.

Bass test

How low can you go?

Deep tones from 200 Hz down to 20 Hz, the bottom of human hearing. Mostly it tests your speakers or headphones.

Tone generator

Any pitch, 20 Hz – 20 kHz

Hz

Tone volume

Start quiet: high tones and square waves get tiring fast.

Take it to bed

An app without the app store.

Add Ears & Waves to your home screen and it opens like any app — full screen, with its own icon. Everything it needs is saved on your device, so it keeps playing on a plane, in a tent or with Wi-Fi off.

Preparing offline mode…

Works offlineNo streaming. Sound is computed on your device, forever.
Screen offKeeps playing with the phone locked. The timer fades it out gently.
PrivateNo account, no ads, no cookies. Your mixes stay on your device.

Speaker phase test.