Headphones On

Headphones and playback

Both techniques depend on each ear getting a different signal. Almost everything that goes wrong here is something quietly mixing your two channels back together before they reach you.

Use headphones, not speakers

Through speakers, the two channels mix in the air on their way to you.

For binaural beats, what you hear instead is an ordinary throbbing. This is worth knowing, because it does not sound like failure. It sounds like it is working. It is a different effect, made at your ear rather than in your brain.

For bilateral audio, speakers can carry left and right, but the movement goes shallow and it only holds if you sit still in exactly the right place between a properly placed stereo pair.

Headphones remove the uncertainty for both. Earbuds are fine.

Turn off spatial audio

Spatial Audio, Spatialize Stereo, 3D audio, and Dolby Atmos for headphones all work by feeding a filtered copy of each channel into the opposite ear. It is a deliberate imitation of the thing speakers do wrong, which makes it the single most likely setting to flatten either effect.

  • iPhone: with headphones connected, press and hold the volume slider in Control Centre, then set it to Off.
  • Android: stereo is normally left alone, but turn off any spatial audio switch in Sound settings.

Check you are not in mono

A single accessibility setting will destroy both effects completely, and nothing on this page can tell you it is on.

  • iOS: Settings, Accessibility, Audio and Visual, Mono Audio
  • Android: Settings, Accessibility, Audio adjustment
  • macOS: System Settings, Accessibility, Audio
  • Windows: Settings, Accessibility, Audio

While you are there, check the left-right balance slider has not drifted to one side.

Wired is marginally safer

For one specific reason. If anything on your device opens a microphone while Bluetooth headphones are connected, Bluetooth switches to its phone-call mode, which is mono.

Otherwise ordinary Bluetooth is fine. Noise cancelling is fine. Codec quality is fine. This is a much smaller worry than spatial audio.

Left and right markings

Wearing them the wrong way round does not change the beat rate, and as far as anyone has tested it does not change either effect.

Check anyway, because of what it tells you. If swapping your headphones over makes no audible difference at all, something is summing your channels together, and that does matter.

This page cannot check your setup

It has no way of detecting mono audio, spatial audio, or what you are listening through. No browser gives a website that.

Anything that claims to have verified your setup automatically is guessing, and it will tell the people whose audio is broken that everything is fine. Use your ears instead.

The ten-second check

  1. Play something with a clear sound on one side only. Ask yourself: is it only in my left ear?
  2. Repeat on the right.

Both ears, or centred? Your channels are being summed. Check mono audio, and check you are not on speakers.

Wrong side both times? Your headphones are on backwards. Harmless.

Mostly one side both times? Check the balance slider.