Why headphones need their own test
Headphones fail differently from speakers. The most common fault is a broken conductor inside the cable, usually right where the wire meets the plug — it survives gentle use and cuts out when the plug flexes. The second most common is a lost seal: an earcup that sits even slightly off the ear loses almost all its bass, which people misread as “bad sound quality” when the headphone is fine. This test is designed to expose both within a minute.
Run the channel check first: a steady tone in the left ear, then the right, then both. Both sides should sound equally loud. Then switch to the pan mode, where the tone slides continuously from left to right — the traveling marker above the meter shows where the sound should be at every moment, and any sticking, jumping or one-sided dragging points to a channel imbalance worth returning the unit for.
Reading the results
One dead side on wired headphones means the cable or plug, almost never the driver. Wiggle the plug during the test: if the side flickers back to life, the wire is broken and the fix is a replaceable cable if your model has one. Weak bass is a fit problem: press the earcups gently against your head during the bass tones on the bass test — if the bass returns when you press, you need a better seal, not new headphones. Dropouts on wireless models are usually interference rather than hardware; our Bluetooth cutting-out guide covers the fixes. A faint hiss at idle is normal amplification noise and not a defect at normal listening levels.
Bought them recently? Walk through the buying checklist before the return window closes — it lists every check worth doing while you still can.