Headphone rattle test: pure tones for driver buzzing and loose parts
Walk a sine tone from 30 Hz up to 8 kHz and listen for the frequency where the buzz starts. That single frequency tells you whether it's excursion, a loose part, or a coil problem.
A headphone rattle test isolates buzzing that music masks. Pure sine tones at increasing frequencies let you pinpoint exactly which driver is misbehaving and what frequency triggers it. A driver that buzzes at 30 Hz but not 50 Hz has an excursion problem. A buzz that appears only at one midrange frequency is usually a loose part or grille resonance. Pure tones are the only honest way to expose this because any complex signal buries the buzz under other content.
By TechCompare · Updated
Calculator
Frequency Generator
How this is calculated
A loose driver, detached dust cap, broken voice coil former, or loose grille screw all reveal themselves at specific frequencies. Start low and work up: 30 Hz for excursion, 60 Hz for the harmonic, 250 Hz for midrange cone motion, 1 kHz for the crossover band, 4 kHz and 8 kHz for tweeter and coil problems. If you hear a buzz at one tone but not the others, you've localized the failure. If a tone makes both ears buzz identically it's probably your room or your head shaking, not the headphones - try the same test on a flat surface to rule that out.
Verdict
Music is too messy to diagnose headphone problems with. A held pure sine tone at the right frequency exposes any rattle immediately. Find the frequency that triggers the buzz, then decide whether it's mechanical (loose part, obvious fix) or voice-coil (replace the driver).
More Frequency Generator scenarios
Frequently asked questions
Why does my headphone buzz with one tone but not others?
Is the buzz from my headphones or my head?
Related tools
Contrast Checker
Check color contrast ratios for WCAG AA/AAA accessibility compliance.
Use tool ➜Open Graph Visualizer
Preview how your website links will look when shared on Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Discord.
Use tool ➜Color Picker
Pick colors and convert between HEX, RGB, HSL, CMYK, and HSV formats.
Use tool ➜LLM Token Counter
Count tokens in any prompt for GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama with exact OpenAI tokenization.
Use tool ➜