Headphone test
Five checks on any pair of headphones, in about five minutes: channels, driver matching, how low the bass actually goes, how high you can still hear, and whether anything distorts. Best done while you can still return them.
Start at a low level and raise it gradually — sustained test tones are more fatiguing than music at the same volume.
1. Channels and driver matching
Same 440 Hz tone in each ear. Confirm the side is right, then switch back and forth listening for one being quieter. A weak driver is the most common defect and the hardest to notice with music.
2. Bass extension
Work down. The lowest tone you can hear as a pitch rather than a buzz is roughly where your headphones stop. On in-ears, press them in gently — if the bass appears, your seal was the limit, not the driver.
3. Treble and your hearing range
Work up until it disappears. Past about 15 kHz you are usually testing your ears rather than the headphones — see the table below for what is normal at your age.
4. Sweep for rattle
20 Hz to 20 kHz over 20 seconds. Listen for a buzz that appears at one pitch and vanishes at the next — that is a damaged diaphragm or trapped debris, and music hides it completely.
What is normal at your age
The top of human hearing declines steadily through adulthood. This is presbycusis, it happens to everyone, and it is not a sign that your headphones are faulty.
| Age | Typical upper limit |
|---|---|
| Under 20 | ~17–20 kHz |
| 20s | ~16–17 kHz |
| 30s | ~15–16 kHz |
| 40s | ~14–15 kHz |
| 50s | ~12–14 kHz |
| 60+ | ~10–12 kHz |
Almost no music has content above 16 kHz that matters, so losing the top does not mean losing detail in practice. What is worth attention is a difference between your ears: if one side consistently stops several kilohertz earlier than the other, mention it to an audiologist.
Reading the results
| What you found | What it means |
|---|---|
| One side quieter at every frequency | Weak driver — return them |
| One side dead | Failed driver or broken cable core. Try another cable first |
| Buzz at one specific pitch | Damaged diaphragm or trapped debris |
| No bass below ~50 Hz on in-ears | Usually the seal. Press them in and retest |
| Distortion at moderate level | Damaged driver, or your source cannot drive them |
| Quiet overall on a phone | Impedance mismatch, not a fault |
| Treble stops early on both sides equally | Almost certainly your ears, and normal |
Seal matters more than the headphones
On in-ear headphones, the bass you hear is decided more by how well the tip seals than by the driver. A poor seal removes the bottom octave entirely, which is why the same pair can sound thin one day and full the next.
If the bass extension test disappoints, try a different tip size before concluding anything about the headphones. The correct size is usually one larger than people instinctively pick.
On burn-in
There is no good controlled evidence that headphone burn-in produces an audible change. Driver materials do alter slightly with use, but blind tests have not shown listeners reliably identifying burnt-in pairs.
What definitely changes is you. Your ears adapt to a new frequency balance over a few days, which is a real effect and a sufficient explanation for the reports. Test on day one; if something is wrong, waiting two hundred hours will not fix it and the return window will have closed.
If they are fine but everything sounds quiet
Then look upstream. On iPhone the usual suspects are Reduce Loud Sounds under Headphone Safety, loudness normalisation in your streaming app, and recordings that were simply mastered quietly. iPhone volume low works through them in order, and how to make your music louder covers the streaming settings specifically.
When the file itself is the limit, Volume Booster plays your own audio with gain, a bass dial and a 6-band equalizer applied. Worth pairing with the hearing-safety guidance if you are going to spend real time at higher levels on headphones.
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