Device test · Audio
Water Eject
A tone that sweeps from 220 Hz down to 110 Hz, eight times, to push water out of a speaker grille. Most pages that do this play a sound and tell you nothing about it. This one shows the frequency as it descends and the cone travel that frequency asks for — because travel, not loudness, is what moves a droplet.
How this test works
The tone is generated in your browser with the Web Audio API — nothing is downloaded and no audio file is involved. Each pass starts at 220 Hz and slides down to 110 Hz over about a second and a half, and the page runs eight passes before stopping on its own. The level is fixed here rather than exposed as a control, because the useful loudness depends entirely on your device and the only sensible way to set it is your own volume keys, before you start.
The reason the sweep goes down rather than up is the figure printed beside it. At a constant sound pressure the cone's excursion — the distance it physically travels — rises as roughly one over frequency squared. Dropping an octave therefore asks the cone to move about four times as far for the same perceived loudness, and that travel is what pushes a droplet along the grille. The readout shows this as a ratio normalised to the top of the band, so it reads ×1.00 at 220 Hz and ×4.00 at 110 Hz, rising smoothly in between as the sweep descends.
Two things that ratio is not. It is arithmetic from the sweep, not a measurement of your phone — this page cannot know your speaker, its enclosure or how much room the cone actually has, and a number that looked like a measurement would be claiming precision it does not have. And a bigger figure is not automatically better: past the point where the cone runs out of travel the sound distorts, which achieves nothing and is hard on the speaker. If you hear that, turn the volume down rather than up.
Frequently asked questions
Does this actually get water out of a phone speaker?
It can move water that is sitting on or just behind the grille, which is the common case after a splash or a shower. The speaker cone pushes air, and at a low enough frequency it travels far enough to push a droplet along with it — that is the whole mechanism, and it is the same one a phone's own water-eject feature uses. What it cannot do is dry the inside of a device. If liquid has reached the internals, a tone will not help and running the device is the wrong move; power it down and let a repair shop look at it.
Why a low tone instead of just a loud one?
Because loudness and cone travel are different things. At a constant sound pressure the cone's excursion rises as roughly one over frequency squared, so dropping an octave asks the cone to move about four times as far for the same perceived volume. Travel is what shifts a droplet; a high tone at the same loudness barely moves. This page sweeps from 220 Hz down to 110 Hz and prints the relative excursion as it goes, normalised to the top of its own band — so you can see the figure rise as the sweep descends rather than take it on trust.
How loud should I set the volume?
Loud enough to feel the speaker working, and no louder. Turn the system volume up before you press play rather than during, keep the device away from your ear and away from anyone else's, and stop if the sound distorts — distortion at low frequency means the cone is hitting its limit, which does no good and is not kind to the speaker. This page fixes its own level and ramps every start and stop, so the only loudness control is your device's.
It still sounds muffled after a few runs. What now?
Run it a couple more times, then stop and let the device sit somewhere dry and warm — not hot, and not in front of a hairdryer, which pushes moisture further in. Muffled sound that survives drying usually is not water: a grille packed with lint or pocket dust sounds much the same, and a soft brush does more than any tone will. If the speaker crackles or rattles at low volume, that is a damaged cone rather than a wet one, and no sound file repairs it.
Is this the same as the water eject sound my phone plays?
The principle is the same — a low tone with enough cone travel to push a droplet — though the exact frequency and pattern differ by device. A phone's built-in feature has one advantage this page cannot match: it knows its own speaker and can drive it accordingly. This page has to assume nothing about your hardware, which is why it sweeps a band rather than sitting on a single frequency, and why the excursion figure is a ratio across that band rather than a claim about your device.
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