Test if one of your AirPods, earbuds, or phone speakers is quieter than the other due to water or earwax.
Select an ear to play the diagnostic sound
Important: Turn volume to maximum and place on a flat surface for best results.
Important information regarding this tool
After dropping your phone or earbuds in water, it's very common for only one side to become muffled or quiet. Sometimes it's water damage, and other times it's just earwax buildup blocking the speaker grill.
By using this tool to play sound exclusively in your Left or Right channel, you can easily figure out which speaker is struggling. If you find out that one speaker is definitely blocked, you can head back to our main Water Eject tool to blast the water out, or check out our sponsor DevDesk App for more awesome tech tools.
Common questions from our users
This usually happens due to earwax buildup on the speaker mesh, or water getting trapped inside. Try cleaning the mesh gently with a dry toothbrush, or use our deep dust cleaner tool to vibrate the debris out.
This specific tool is just for diagnosing the problem (finding out which speaker is broken). To actually fix it, use the main water ejection mode on our homepage.
Sometimes it is a software issue. Go to your phone's Accessibility Settings > Audio/Visual and ensure the audio balance slider is exactly in the middle.
Yes, temporary Bluetooth syncing issues can cause audio to drop in one ear. Try unpairing and resetting your wireless earbuds.
Distortion usually points to hardware damage (a blown speaker) or severe water/dust blockage. Try our deep cleaning tool.
Yes! Our stereo balance tester uses web standards and works seamlessly across all operating systems and web browsers.
If your laptop is failing, ensure no audio-enhancing software (like spatial audio) is overriding your balance settings.