When watching a good movie late at night, I use headphones to avoid disturbing other people sleeping in the house. But at night sometimes you put on the headphones the wrong way around – left speaker goes over the right ear and vice versa. Even though most of the headphones have L and R printed somewhere on them to mark the left and right speakers, it becomes a struggle to find them in the dark. And if you are using unmarked headphones then its impossible to find which one of them is right and which one is left.
If you are using Android smartphone then you can use a simple app called “Left Right – Stereo Test” that can detect the headphones for you. All you have to do is plug-in the headphones to your smartphone and launch the app. As you tap on the screen, it will play sound in the left speaker and then in the right one. A visual indication is displayed on your phone’s screen to show which speaker is being targeted. If you want to keep it playing continuously, then you can tap on the repeat icon and it will play non-stop through alternate speakers until stopped.
In case of Windows, you have to take a few steps before you can detect the speakers in your headphones or even desktop stereo speakers attached to your PC:
- Press the hotkey Win+R to open the Run dialog.
- Type control mmsys.cpl in the Run dialog and press Enter.
- In the Sound window that shows, select Playback tab, select your playback device (Speakers) and then click on the Configure button.
- In the next window, click on the Test button and it will play sound on left and right speakers alternatively. You can also click on the individual speaker icons to manually play sound on them.
These are only a couple of methods that can be used to find left and right speakers in your headphones. It can also be used to test your sound configuration when you are wiring in your sound system with your PC or Android smartphone. It should also work for wireless Bluetooth headphones.
You can download Left Right – Stereo Test app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leftrightstereo.nejc.leftrightstereo.