Mic test

• Level: how loud your voice comes in, and whether the loudest moments clip, hitting the top and getting cut flat, which sounds crackly.
• Background noise: how far the pauses between your words sit under your voice. Closer than 22 dB, listeners hear the room; more than 32 dB apart, it's quiet.
• Hum: a steady 50 or 60 Hz buzz from the mains power, found the way the hum remover finds it.
• Room echo: how much of the sound is the room ringing on after your words, measured with the same filter the echo remover starts with.
• All of it runs in your browser. The 10 seconds aren't uploaded or saved: they're gone when you test again or leave the page.

• Check that the microphone isn't muted. Many headsets and USB microphones have a mute switch or button, often with a red light.
• Pick the right microphone. A laptop with a headset or a webcam plugged in has two or three; the page lists them by name once the browser has allowed one.
• Check the input level in your computer's sound settings: on Windows, Settings → System → Sound → Input; on a Mac, System Settings → Sound → Input.
• If the browser said no, click the microphone or lock icon in the address bar and allow it for audiorinse.com. On a Mac, also allow your browser in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone; on Windows, in Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone.
• Another app may be holding the microphone, such as a call in Zoom or Teams. Close it and test again.

• Get closer: about a hand's width from the microphone. Distance adds room echo and background noise, and turning the gain up to make up for it adds hiss.
• Set the gain so your loudest words stay below the top. The check says Too loud when they clip and Very quiet when they come nowhere near.
• A dynamic microphone (a Shure SM58 or SM7B, a Rode PodMic, a Samson Q2U) hears less of the room than a condenser. It needs more gain, so on a recorder or interface with a weak preamp, an inline booster such as a FetHead or a Cloudlifter lowers the hiss.
• Soft rooms echo less: curtains, a sofa, a rug or a full bookcase. Bare walls and a hard floor make the voice ring.
• A laptop's built-in microphone hears the keyboard and the fan. A headset or a USB microphone sounds better for little money.

Zoom, Teams, Meet and Discord clean up your sound before they send it: they reduce noise and echo and even out the level. Tick "Test with the browser's noise reduction on" to hear the browser's own version of that, which calls in the browser use. Leave it off to hear the microphone as it is, which is what a recording gets.

Then record for real with the voice recorder. A recording that already has noise, echo or hum in it can be cleaned afterwards: the check links the tool for each.