Home / Monitoring / Mic Playback
MonitoringMic Playback
Hear your own microphone in real time through your headphones, and catch problems before your audience does.
Mic playback means hearing your own microphone through your headphones. Use it to catch popping Ps, mouth noise and a fan you stopped noticing hours ago.
Mic Playback — how to do it
- Put headphones on first
This is not optional. On speakers, the microphone captures its own output and builds a feedback howl within a second.
- Start the microphone test
Monitoring routes the live input to your output, so the input has to be running first.
- Open the Hear yourself panel
Turn monitoring on and raise the volume slider slowly from zero until your voice sits at a comfortable level.
- Listen for the room
Monitoring reveals what you have stopped noticing: a fan, a fridge, traffic, a laptop under load. All of it goes out on your calls.
- Check your plosives
Say a sentence full of P and B sounds. If you hear thumps, move the microphone off to the side of your mouth.
- Set a level you can talk over
Monitoring that is too loud makes you speak too quietly. Aim for slightly below your natural speaking volume.
Monitoring problems
- Monitoring sounds thinBrowser processing is shaping the signal. Turn off noise suppression and auto gain in the console for a truer sound.
- Only one earThe microphone is mono, which some systems place hard left. Use the Headphones panel to confirm both drivers work.
- Cannot hear anythingConfirm the correct output device is selected in your system settings, and raise the monitor volume slider.
- A rising squealFeedback. You are on speakers, or your headphone volume is high enough to leak into the microphone. Lower it or switch to closed headphones.
The most useful thirty seconds before any recording
Almost every avoidable audio problem is audible in the first thirty seconds of monitoring: sitting too far away, a boom pointed straight at your mouth, a fan that started when the laptop woke up, a chair that creaks on every sentence.
None of these appear on a level meter. A meter can only tell you how loud something is, not what it is. Monitoring turns an abstract number into something you can judge instantly, which is why every studio has it and every bad recording lacked it.
Common questions
Is zero-latency monitoring possible?
In hardware, nearly — audio interfaces mix the input directly to the headphone output. In a browser, some buffering is unavoidable.
What is sidetone?
The same idea implemented in hardware: a headset feeds a small amount of your own voice back to your ears so you do not shout.
Why do broadcasters use it?
Because you cannot control what you cannot hear. Monitoring makes distance, plosives and background noise immediately obvious.
Can I monitor on Bluetooth headphones?
Technically yes, practically no. The delay is large enough to be distracting to the point of making speech difficult.
Related tests
If that was not it, try: the driver checklist, stopping feedback, or the latency meter.
Tested and updated · Written and maintained by check-mic.com · Report a problem with this page