Microphone test

The meter shows RMS level rather than peak, because RMS tracks how loud something actually sounds while a peak meter jumps on every consonant. What you want when speaking normally is peaks in the 60–80% band. Much below that and the far end will strain to hear you or your noise gate will cut the start of every sentence; much above and you are clipping, which sounds harsh and cannot be fixed afterwards because the waveform is genuinely gone.

If the bar never moves at all, the usual causes in order are: the wrong input selected (the picker appears once permission is granted, and laptops often default to a webcam mic rather than a headset), the operating system muting the device separately from the browser, or a hardware mute switch on the headset itself. macOS and Windows both have a system-level microphone privacy setting that blocks the browser before the browser ever asks you.

One reading to take with some caution: getUserMedia turns on echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain control by default, and automatic gain is the one that matters here, because it quietly lifts a quiet signal and pulls a loud one down. A meter that sits at a sensible level can therefore be a badly set gain that the browser is correcting for you, and the application you actually call from may not correct it the same way.

One thing this test cannot tell you is what you sound like; level is not quality. A microphone can show a perfect meter and still sound thin or picked up from across the room. For that you need to hear yourself back, which means a recording, which is exactly what this page deliberately does not do.