Surround sound test
Play each channel of a 5.1 or 7.1 system on its own and confirm the sound arrives from the right direction. It is the fastest way to catch a crossed pair of cables or a speaker the receiver never got told about.
Tap any speaker to start — we will check how many channels your output really has.
Pick a speaker, or play them in order. Each one should sound from its own position.
How to read the result
Select a position and listen for where the sound comes from, not just whether something plays. Almost every surround fault worth finding is a mismatch between the two: a tone that plays but arrives from the wrong side of the room.
The sound comes from the wrong speaker
Two channels are crossed. This is far more common than a failed speaker and it is usually at the receiver terminals rather than in the walls. Work through the positions in order with the sequence button — a swapped pair shows up immediately as two adjacent positions trading places.
One position is silent
Check the obvious causes in this order: the receiver is configured for fewer speakers than you have connected, the channel level is turned all the way down, the cable is loose at one end, the speaker is faulty. The first two account for most silent channels and both are free to rule out.
Everything plays from everywhere
The receiver is upmixing. Any mode that spreads stereo across all speakers will make every test sound correct and tell you nothing. Switch to a direct, pure or stereo-bypass mode first.
All the positions sound the same
Your output is stereo and the test is being mixed down — the page says so above the speaker grid when that happens. Change your system output device to the one actually driving the surround system.
Why a browser cannot always test surround
A web page can only send audio to the channels the operating system reports for the current output device. When that device is a stereo one, the browser mixes everything down to two channels before it ever reaches a speaker, and no amount of code changes that. This page reads the real channel count up front and tells you which of the two situations you are in, rather than playing a tone and letting you assume the routing was tested.
When the output does expose six or eight channels, each position is driven on its own discrete channel, which is a genuine routing test. When it does not, the positions are approximated by panning so the page is still useful for left and right — and it says so.
Related tools
- Speaker test — left, right and stereo on a phone or laptop
- Tone generator — any frequency from 20 Hz to 20 kHz
- Fix My Speaker — clear water and dust with sound
Surround test questions
Why does it say my output is only 2 channels?
Because it is. A browser can only address the channels the operating system actually exposes for the current output device, and a laptop speaker, a stereo headset or a Bluetooth speaker exposes two. That is not a limitation of this page — no web tool can create channels that the output does not have. Switch your system output to the receiver or sound card driving the surround set, then reload.
What is the correct channel order?
The order used here is the standard one for discrete multichannel audio: front left, front right, centre, LFE (subwoofer), surround left, surround right, and for 7.1, rear left and rear right. If a speaker plays when a different position is selected, the cabling or the receiver assignment is crossed.
The centre channel sounds quieter than the others.
Check it against the front pair directly rather than by memory. A centre that is genuinely quieter is usually a level trim in the receiver rather than a fault — most receivers set channel levels independently, and the centre is the one people most often leave low after a calibration run.
Nothing comes out of the subwoofer.
The subwoofer test plays a 50 Hz tone, which is well inside a subwoofer range but below what most other speakers can reproduce. If it is silent, check that the subwoofer is powered and that the receiver is set to send LFE to it. If you hear the tone faintly from the front speakers instead, the receiver is set to "no subwoofer" and is redirecting bass to the mains.
Two speakers play at once when I select one.
That is the receiver upmixing rather than passing the channel through. Surround modes such as Dolby Surround, DTS Neural:X or any "all channel stereo" setting deliberately spread one input across several speakers. Switch the receiver to a direct or pure mode and test again.
Can I use this to test headphones?
Only for left and right. Virtual surround on headphones is a processing effect applied to a stereo output, so the discrete channel test will report two channels and mix down accordingly. The left and right positions are still meaningful; the rest are approximations.
Does this test sound quality?
No. It tests routing — whether each channel reaches the speaker it is supposed to reach, at a roughly comparable level. Judging distortion, frequency response or imaging needs material and a room, not a test tone. For a single speaker that sounds wrong rather than mislocated, the frequency sweep on the speaker test is the more useful tool.