Audio tests

Audio problems are usually routing, not hardware. The wrong input device is selected, an application has claimed exclusive access, or the system is sending sound to a display over HDMI instead of your speakers. Testing in the browser helps precisely because it takes a second, independent path to the same devices.

The microphone test shows a live input level, so you can separate a mic that is muted from one that is selected but hearing nothing, and from one that works but is set too quiet. Nothing is recorded or uploaded — the meter reads the stream and discards it.

For output, the speaker test plays a tone through whichever device the browser is using, and the left/right test plays into one channel at a time. That second test is the quickest way to catch swapped or half-dead headphones, because a silent channel is easy to miss while both are playing together.