Why use speakers instead of headphones?

The test is acoustic: it plays a click the microphone must physically hear to time the round trip. With headphones the sound goes to your ears, not the mic, so nothing returns to measure. Use speakers and place the mic near them.

Does acoustic distance affect the number?

A little. Sound travels ~34 cm per millisecond, so a mic 34 cm away adds ~1 ms each way. Keep the mic close to the speaker to measure mostly the electronic round trip.

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Mic Latency Tester

Measure your real round-trip audio latency in milliseconds. The tool plays a short click through your speakers, your microphone hears it, and the delay between sending and detecting is timed — repeated over several trials for a stable average with min / max and a quality rating.

🔊 Use speakers, not headphones — the mic must be able to hear the click acoustically. Put the mic near the speaker and keep the room quiet for the cleanest result.

🔒 Everything runs locally in your browser. No audio is recorded, uploaded, or stored.

Microphone

Input device

Device names appear after you grant permission once.

Test settings

Number of trials

Click volume 70 %

Loud enough that the mic clearly hears each click, but not so loud it distorts. Increase this if you get "no echo detected".

Idle — press Start measurement.

Reported by browser

Base latency

—

Output latency

—

Sample rate

—

Buffer (process)

—

Round-trip latency

—ms

average of valid trials

Min—

Max—

Valid—

Rating (round-trip): under 30 ms = excellent, 30–70 ms = usable, over 70 ms = high (noticeable for live monitoring). This is the full loop: output + acoustic travel + input + processing.

Per-trial latency (ms) — each bar is one click→echo measurement

Live microphone level — watch the click echoes arrive

How the Mic Latency Test Works

"Round-trip latency" is the total time from when your computer sends a sound to when it hears that sound back through the microphone. This tool measures it directly: it schedules a short, sharp click to play through your speakers at a precisely known moment, then watches the raw microphone signal sample-by-sample for the click to arrive. The gap between the two is one latency measurement. It repeats this several times and reports the average, because any single measurement has some jitter.

That round-trip number is the sum of several parts: the output latency (how long the browser + OS + audio hardware buffer before sound actually leaves the speaker), the acoustic travel time (sound covers about 34 cm per millisecond through air), the input latency (buffering on the way back in), and a little processing time. Placing the mic close to the speaker minimizes the acoustic part so you mostly measure the electronic round trip.

Why buffer size matters

Most audio latency comes from buffering. Larger audio buffers are safer against dropouts but add delay; smaller buffers are snappier but risk glitches. The browser exposes two hints — base latency and output latency — shown in the readouts above. They reflect the buffering the browser has chosen and are a useful lower bound; the measured round-trip will always be somewhat larger because it also includes the input path and the air.

Getting an accurate result

Use speakers and place the microphone close to them. Headphones won't work — the mic can't hear them.
Quiet room. The tool calibrates to your background noise first; loud rooms can mask the click or cause misfires.
Enough volume. If you get "no echo detected", raise the Click volume so the mic clearly registers each click.
Expect ±a few ms of jitter. Browser audio timing isn't perfectly deterministic, which is exactly why this tool averages many trials.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as good latency?

For this round-trip measurement, under ~30 ms is excellent, 30–70 ms is usable for most purposes, and over ~70 ms becomes noticeable — especially for live monitoring while recording or singing, where you hear yourself delayed. Note that round-trip is roughly double the one-way latency a DAW might report, since it includes both the output and input paths.

Why do I need to use speakers instead of headphones?

The test works acoustically: it plays a click and the microphone must physically hear it to time the round trip. With headphones the sound goes into your ears, not the mic, so nothing comes back to measure. Use your speakers and put the mic near them.

Why does it disable echo cancellation?

Echo cancellation is specifically designed to remove exactly the kind of speaker-to-mic feedback this test relies on. The tool requests the raw signal with echo cancellation, noise suppression, and auto-gain all off so the click comes through cleanly. Some systems may still apply processing the page can't override, which can reduce accuracy.

It says "no echo detected" — what's wrong?

Usually one of: you're on headphones (switch to speakers), the click volume is too low (raise it), the mic is too far from the speaker (move it closer), or the room is too noisy (the calibrated threshold is high). Echo cancellation that can't be disabled can also remove the click entirely.

How accurate is this?

It's a good ballpark — typically within a handful of milliseconds. Browser audio scheduling isn't perfectly sample-deterministic across the output/input boundary, so each trial has some jitter; averaging many trials and reporting min/max gives you a reliable range rather than a single fragile number. For sample-exact figures, a dedicated audio interface and DAW loopback test is the gold standard.

Does the acoustic distance affect the number?

Yes, but only a little. Sound travels about 34 cm per millisecond, so a mic 34 cm from the speaker adds ~1 ms each way. Keep the mic close to the speaker to minimize this and measure mostly the electronic round trip.

Is any audio recorded or sent anywhere?

No. The microphone signal is analyzed locally in your browser purely to detect the click's arrival time, and is never recorded, saved, or transmitted. The microphone is released as soon as the measurement finishes or you press Stop.

How is this different from the browser's reported latency?

The "base latency" and "output latency" values are the browser's own estimates of its output buffering — a lower bound for one direction only. The measured round-trip number is an actual end-to-end measurement that also includes the input path, the air gap, and real-world timing, so it's larger and more representative of what you'd actually experience.

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