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Tone Generator — Choose the Right Frequency, Not Just Any Frequency

Every tone generator online plays a number. Almost none tell you which number you actually want. This one pairs the generator with the reasoning: what a frequency physically asks your speaker to do, which band belongs to which job, and where the useful range stops for the device in your hand.

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Ready — Tap to Fix Speaker

Turn volume up · Point speaker down · Press Play

Volume: 100%

Repeat Cycles: 1× Auto mode only — Manual mode uses the Loops slider in each panel below instead.

Cleaning Focus Auto mode only. Water Ejection plays the 165Hz/145Hz water-focused tones; Dust Removal plays the 200Hz/sweep tones; "Deep Clean" runs every sound track while vibration fires at the same time — not one after the other.

Safety: Peak gain is capped so this tool cannot exceed your device's normal audio output. Keep volume at 80–100% for best results. Do not press your ear against the speaker while playing.

TL;DR — A tone generator produces a single, steady frequency measured in hertz — the number of pressure cycles the speaker completes each second. Low numbers mean large, slow diaphragm movement; high numbers mean tiny, fast movement. That one fact decides everything else. If you want to shift trapped water or loose dust, you want the low end, roughly 120 to 200 Hz, because only that band moves enough air to push a droplet out of a cavity. If you want to check whether a driver still reproduces its full range, you want a slow sweep rather than a fixed tone. If you want a reference pitch, 440 Hz is the international standard. If you want to know whether a rattle is the speaker or the case, hold a tone at the exact frequency where it appears and press on the chassis. Two warnings that matter: a sustained pure tone is far harder on a small driver than music at the same volume, so keep it around two-thirds volume and under thirty seconds; and a browser tone is not a hearing test, no matter what the frequency reads.

Hertz is a count, not a quality. One hertz is one complete cycle of pressure per second, so a 100 Hz tone asks the diaphragm to travel out and back a hundred times a second, and a 10,000 Hz tone asks it to do so ten thousand times. The mechanical demand is completely different at the two ends: low frequencies need displacement, which a phone speaker barely has, while high frequencies need speed, which it has in abundance. This is why a phone can sound crisp and still produce almost nothing below 100 Hz.

The practical consequence is that choosing a frequency is choosing a job. A tone that is perfect for loosening a lint mat is useless for checking treble extension, and a tone that proves a tweeter works will not move a droplet a single millimetre. The tables below map the job to the band so you are not guessing at a slider.

If your reason for being here is a specific fault rather than curiosity, skip ahead: liquid goes to water eject sound, dust goes to speaker cleaner sound, channel and balance questions go to the audio test suite, and overall device health goes to speaker test.

🇮🇳 Popular in India: Two uses dominate here in India. The first is monsoon-season water clearing, where the low band around 165 Hz does the work and a fixed tone is preferred over a sweep because the droplet needs sustained pressure in one direction rather than a moving one — the full routine is on the water eject page, and the drying follow-up on speaker deep dry. The second is second-hand handset checking, where a slow sweep exposes a rattling driver that a seller’s chosen song conveniently hides. A note on dust: in dry, dusty months a fine mineral layer settles into the grille mesh rather than matting like lint does, and that layer resonates at a narrow frequency instead of dulling everything uniformly. If a buzz appears only within a small window of the sweep and disappears either side of it, that is almost always particulate resonance and it responds to dry brushing rather than to more tone playback. Run tones with the case off — a tight silicone case adds its own rattle and gets blamed on the phone.

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Step-by-Step: Tone Generator

Decide what the tone is for before you touch the slider. Clearing liquid, shifting dust, testing range, finding a rattle and setting a reference pitch each need a different frequency. Choosing at random is why most people conclude a tone generator “did nothing”. Use the job table further down to pick a starting number.
Remove the case and set a repeatable volume. Take off any case, set media volume to roughly two-thirds, and keep that setting for every repetition. A pure tone at maximum volume adds amplifier distortion that you will hear as a buzz and then misdiagnose as a damaged driver.
Start low and move upward, never the reverse. Begin around 100 Hz and raise the frequency gradually. Starting high and dropping means you meet the driver’s hardest working region while your ears are still adjusting, and quiet low-end faults get missed. Rising order also makes the roll-off point obvious.
Hold each frequency for only a few seconds. Three to five seconds is enough to judge a tone. A sustained sine deposits continuous energy into one part of the voice coil, unlike music which constantly moves that energy around, so long holds heat a small driver for no diagnostic gain.
Note the two edges of the usable band. Move down until the tone stops being audible and becomes a faint buzz or nothing — that is the low roll-off. Then move up until it thins out or disappears. On a phone the low edge is normally somewhere between 70 and 150 Hz depending on the model, and that is a design limit rather than a fault.
Isolate any buzz you find. Park the tone at the exact frequency where the buzz appears, then press gently on the chassis, then on the case, then hold the device by its edges only. If pressing changes the buzz, the source is a loose panel or the case. If nothing changes it, the source is inside the speaker cavity.
Choose a waveform deliberately. Sine is a single pure frequency and is the correct default for every diagnostic in this list. Square and sawtooth contain strong harmonics, which makes them louder and harsher at the same setting — useful for exposing a rattle quickly, misleading for judging whether a driver reproduces the fundamental.
Convert the result into one next page. Gargling or bubbling means liquid; a narrow buzz means debris; a missing band means driver damage; nothing at all means routing or an amplifier fault. The verdict table below names the page for each outcome so the test ends in an action.

Device Specs & Recommended Settings

Frequency by job — pick the row that matches your reason, not the loudest tone:

Job	Frequency to use	Waveform	Why this band
Push water out of a speaker cavity	150–185 Hz (165 Hz is the common choice)	Sine	Maximum diaphragm excursion the driver can sustain; enough air movement to displace a droplet
Loosen dry dust and lint	120–200 Hz, then a slow sweep	Sine	Low band vibrates the mesh; the sweep prevents one fixed resonance doing all the work
Find the low roll-off point	Descend from 200 Hz to 40 Hz	Sine	Reveals where the driver simply stops producing output
Check treble extension	8 kHz to 16 kHz	Sine	Above this, most adult hearing, not the speaker, is the limit
Locate a rattle	Sweep slowly, then hold at the buzz	Square exposes it fastest	Resonance appears in a narrow window and vanishes either side
Reference pitch for tuning	440 Hz	Sine	International standard tuning frequency [3]
Check a channel is alive	1 kHz	Sine	Mid-band; every working driver reproduces it, so silence means a real fault
Compare two speakers fairly	1 kHz, fixed volume	Sine	Sits near the ear’s most sensitive region, so level differences are obvious

Band reference — what each region of the spectrum actually does:

Band	Range	What you perceive	Small-speaker reality
Sub-bass	20–60 Hz	Felt more than heard	Phones and laptops produce essentially none
Bass	60–250 Hz	Weight and body	The working band for water and dust routines
Low mid	250–500 Hz	Warmth, boxiness	Where a muffled speaker loses definition first
Mid	500 Hz–2 kHz	Voice, presence	Strongest region on almost every phone speaker
Upper mid	2–6 kHz	Clarity, harshness	Where a blocked grille is most audible as dullness
Treble	6–12 kHz	Detail, air	First band lost to a lint mat
Top octave	12–20 kHz	Barely tonal	Audibility here declines with age, independent of hardware

Waveform comparison at the same frequency and the same volume setting:

Waveform	Harmonic content	Perceived character	Best used for
Sine	Fundamental only	Smooth, pure, quietest of the four	Every measurement; the default
Triangle	Odd harmonics, rolling off fast	Slightly brighter than sine	Gentler alternative when sine is inaudible
Square	Strong odd harmonics	Hard, buzzy, noticeably louder	Provoking a rattle you cannot otherwise find
Sawtooth	All harmonics	Harshest of the four	Rare — stress checks only, briefly

Result → Meaning → Next step

Find the row that matches what the tone produced. Every row ends in one action.

What you heard	What it means	Do this next
Clean tone across the whole range	Driver and opening are healthy	Nothing mechanical — look at EQ, volume limits and app settings
Gargling or bubbling on low tones	Liquid still in the cavity	Run the water eject routine, then deep dry
Buzz in one narrow frequency window only	Debris or a lint mat resonating	Cleaner sound, then dry clean the grille
Buzz across the entire range	Torn diaphragm, loose coil or a distorting amplifier	Lower the volume and retry; if it persists, diagnose here
Buzz that changes when you press the chassis	Loose panel, case or a trapped particle outside the driver	Remove the case and retest before assuming speaker damage
Nothing below roughly 100 Hz	Normal low-end roll-off for a small driver	No action — this is a design limit, not a fault
Silent gap in the middle of the range	Driver band damage	Service assessment — no cleaning restores a missing band
Everything audible but thin and quiet	Opening partially blocked or output limited	Muffled diagnosis
One channel silent, the other fine	Channel, routing or a dead driver	Left/right audio test
No output at any frequency	Routing, mute state or amplifier fault	Speaker not working ladder
Tone plays but you hear nothing above 14 kHz	Hearing range, not hardware — high-frequency sensitivity falls with age	No action; judge the speaker on the mid band instead

What is a hertz, in one paragraph

A hertz is one cycle per second. Sound is a pressure wave, so a 200 Hz tone means the speaker pushes air outward and pulls it back two hundred times every second, and your eardrum follows the same rhythm. Doubling the number raises the pitch by exactly one octave, which is why 440 Hz and 880 Hz sound like the same note at two heights. The audible range for a young adult runs from roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, but that upper figure describes fresh hearing rather than typical hearing — sensitivity above about 15 kHz declines steadily from the teens onward, which is normal and not a defect in either you or the speaker. Frequency is separate from loudness: a 50 Hz tone and a 3 kHz tone can carry identical energy while the second one sounds dramatically louder, because human hearing is far more sensitive in the mid band. Keep that asymmetry in mind whenever you compare two tones by ear.

Safety limits worth respecting

A pure tone is harder on a driver than music. Music spreads energy across the spectrum and moves constantly; a sustained sine concentrates it in one place. Keep holds under about thirty seconds.
Do not run low tones at maximum volume. The low band demands the largest diaphragm excursion, and maximum volume is exactly where a small driver reaches its mechanical limit. Two-thirds is the working setting for everything on this page.
Protect your hearing, not just the speaker. Pure tones are easy to underestimate in headphones because they lack the dynamics that normally trigger caution. Follow standard safe-listening guidance on level and duration [5].
Stop if the tone turns to a crack or a rasp. That is mechanical distress, not a diagnostic result. Reduce volume immediately and retest at a lower level.
Keep pets out of the room for high-frequency runs. Dogs and cats hear well above the human ceiling, so a tone that is silent to you can be genuinely unpleasant to them.

What a browser tone generator cannot do

It is not a hearing test. A real assessment controls the level in calibrated decibels, in a quiet room, through calibrated transducers. A web page controls none of those, so an inaudible tone here tells you nothing clinical. If you have a genuine hearing concern, see a professional.
It cannot measure your speaker’s frequency response. Response measurement needs a calibrated microphone and a controlled environment [4]. What you can do by ear is find the edges and spot the gaps, which is enough for a diagnosis.
It cannot reach a phone’s earpiece. Media audio does not route to the call speaker on iOS or Android, so no browser tone tests it.
It cannot exceed your output hardware. The generator can request 22 kHz, but the sample rate, the amplifier and the driver decide what is actually produced.
It is not a repair. Tones diagnose and, in the water and dust cases, assist. Cleaning happens on the cleaning page; repair routing is on how to fix phone speaker.

Which page do you actually want?

Your question	Right page
I want to pick and play a specific frequency	This page
Is my left/right correct and balanced?	Audio test
Is this phone speaker healthy before I buy it?	Speaker test
I want a ready-made cleaning tone, not a slider	Speaker cleaner sound
I want the one-tap clearing routine	Clear my speaker
There is water in the speaker	Water eject sound
It sounds dull but works	Muffled diagnosis
No sound at all	Speaker not working

Sources & Citations

W3C, Web Audio API — OscillatorNode. w3.org/TR/webaudio#OscillatorNode — defines the sine, square, sawtooth and triangle waveform types and the frequency parameter used by this generator.
W3C, Web Audio API — GainNode. w3.org/TR/webaudio#GainNode — level control and why abrupt starts and stops produce audible clicks.
International Organization for Standardization, ISO 16:1975 — Acoustics: Standard tuning frequency (Standard musical pitch). iso.org/standard/3601.html — establishes A = 440 Hz.
International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC 60268-5 — Sound system equipment: Loudspeakers. webstore.iec.ch — the measurement conditions required for a genuine frequency-response figure.
World Health Organization, Make Listening Safe. who.int/activities/making-listening-safe — safe listening level and duration guidance.

Which Frequency Should You Use?

Every water-eject tool online plays a tone — but not all tones are equal. Here is the frequency map our audio engineering team calibrated after testing 40+ phone and speaker drivers:

Frequency	Best For	Why It Works
145 Hz	Large drivers — JBL Flip/Charge, Bose SoundLink, Sonos, MacBook, laptop woofers	Longer wavelength moves more air; matches the resonant frequency of 40–60 mm cones.
165 Hz	iPhone 7–16, Samsung Galaxy S/Note, Pixel, OnePlus, Xiaomi, most phones — the Apple Water Eject frequency	Peak diaphragm displacement for the 8–12 mm micro-speakers used in phones. Breaks water surface tension without clipping.
200 Hz	Dust, lint, pocket fluff, sand crystals	Faster oscillation vibrates fine particles loose from the mesh grille — water needs slow, heavy waves; dust needs quick shake.
100–200 Hz sweep	Deep clean when you don’t know what’s in there	Sweeps through every resonant frequency so something in that range shakes whatever is stuck.

Rule of thumb: phones → 165 Hz · Bluetooth speakers → 145 Hz · dusty grille → 200 Hz · unsure → Auto Mode.

Speaker Cleaner App vs. This Browser Tool

Most Play Store “speaker cleaner” and “water eject” apps do exactly what this page does — play a sine tone through your speaker — but with three trade-offs: install permission, background tracking, and a 4–15 MB download over your data plan. This tool synthesises the same tone live using the browser’s Web Audio API. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored on your device, and there is no ad SDK.

	This tool	Typical “Speaker Cleaner” app
Install size	0 MB (webpage)	4–15 MB APK/IPA
Signup / permissions	None	Storage, ads, sometimes microphone
Tone quality	Live sine wave, no compression	Bundled MP3 (lossy, weaker force)
Ads / tracking	None on this page	Interstitial + banner ads on most
Works on iPhone Safari	Yes	Requires App Store install

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a tone generator used for?

It produces one steady frequency so you can test or treat a specific thing rather than guess with music. The four common uses are pushing trapped water out of a speaker cavity with a low tone around 165 Hz, loosening dust with a low tone or a slow sweep, finding where a driver stops producing output, and locating a rattle by parking a tone at the frequency where the buzz appears.

What does Hz mean in sound?

Hertz counts complete pressure cycles per second. A 500 Hz tone means the speaker completes five hundred out-and-back movements every second. Higher numbers are higher pitches, and doubling the number raises the pitch by exactly one octave. Human hearing covers roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, with the upper limit falling naturally with age.

Which frequency is best for cleaning a phone speaker?

Between 120 and 200 Hz for the initial work, because that band produces the largest diaphragm movement a small driver can sustain and therefore the most air displacement. A slow sweep afterwards helps, since a fixed tone only excites one resonance while a sweep passes through many. Anything above about 1 kHz moves too little air to shift a particle.

Is 440 Hz special?

Yes, by agreement rather than by physics. ISO 16 defines A above middle C as 440 Hz, which is why instrument tuners default to it. For speaker diagnostics it has no advantage; 1 kHz is a better general-purpose reference because it sits near the ear’s most sensitive region.

Can a tone generator damage my speaker?

At sensible levels, no. The risk comes from sustained low-frequency tones at maximum volume, because low frequencies demand the greatest diaphragm excursion and maximum volume is where a small driver meets its mechanical limit. Keep the volume around two-thirds and each hold under thirty seconds and there is no meaningful risk.

Why can I not hear the low frequencies on my phone?

Because the driver is physically too small to move the required volume of air. Most phone speakers roll off somewhere between 70 and 150 Hz, and below that point they produce almost nothing regardless of volume. Hearing nothing at 40 Hz on a phone is normal and is not evidence of a fault.

What is the difference between sine and square waves?

A sine wave contains only its fundamental frequency, so it is the honest choice for any measurement. A square wave adds strong odd harmonics, which makes it sound louder and harsher at the same setting and makes it very effective at provoking a rattle — but useless for judging whether a driver actually reproduces the fundamental you selected.

Is this a hearing test?

No. A hearing test controls the presentation level in calibrated decibels, in a quiet environment, with calibrated equipment. A browser cannot control any of those, so an inaudible tone here proves nothing about your hearing. Treat any hearing concern as a matter for a qualified professional.

How do I test the frequency response of my speakers?

Properly, you cannot by ear — a real response measurement needs a calibrated microphone in a controlled space. What you can do is a slow sweep from low to high and listen for three things: the point where output disappears at the bottom, any silent gap in the middle, and any narrow band that buzzes. Those three observations catch nearly every practical fault.

Why does my speaker buzz at one frequency but sound fine otherwise?

Because something is resonating. A loose particle, a matted layer of lint, a case edge or a chassis panel has a natural frequency, and it only vibrates audibly when the tone lands on it. Hold the tone at that frequency and press the chassis and the case in turn — if the buzz changes, the source is outside the driver.

What frequency should I use to test if a speaker works at all?

1 kHz. Every functioning driver reproduces it and the ear is highly sensitive there, so silence at 1 kHz is a genuine fault rather than a limitation. Confirm it is not simply a routing problem by turning Bluetooth off completely and unplugging any headset first.

Does the waveform change the frequency?

No. All four waveforms at 200 Hz share the same fundamental 200 Hz cycle. What changes is the harmonic content stacked on top, which alters the character and the perceived loudness but not the pitch.

Can I use a tone generator to get water out of my phone?

Yes, and it is the same mechanism the built-in routines use: a low tone drives the diaphragm hard enough to push a droplet out of the opening. Point the speaker downward, use roughly 165 Hz, and stop between attempts to wipe the escaping water away. The full sequence, including what to do if it does not clear, is on the water eject page.

Why does the same volume sound louder at some frequencies?

Human hearing is not equally sensitive across the spectrum. Sensitivity peaks in the two-to-four kilohertz region and falls sharply at both extremes, so a mid tone and a bass tone carrying identical energy will not sound remotely equal. This is why you should compare channels at one fixed frequency rather than across different ones.