Spatial Audio Test

How to use

1. Put on your headphones. Spatial cues collapse on speakers, so use stereo headphones and confirm left sits on your left. Then press Start.
2. Find the sound on the radar. In Locate mode a footstep or gunshot plays from one spot around you. Click the radar where you heard it, and the test marks the real angle and how far off you were.
3. Track the moving enemy. Switch to Track mode and follow the moving sound with your cursor for 15 seconds. It reports your mean angle error at the end.
4. Read your front/back swaps. After ten rounds, check the swaps count. Calling back when the sound was in front is the swap that fools most players.

Why test this

You hear the footstep but your crosshair swings to the wrong wall. This test turns that guess into a number. A footstep or gunshot plays from one point around you, and you click the radar where you think it came from. Over ten rounds you get an average angle error and a count of front/back swaps, the error that loses rounds. Run it when you buy a new headset, after you toggle virtual surround on or off, or to settle whether stereo or 7.1 reads cleaner for you. It also flags a swapped or dead channel fast. If every sound piles up on one side, your left and right are reversed. Track mode adds a moving enemy you follow by ear for 15 seconds, closer to a real push than a single static cue.

What the results mean

Three numbers sum up a session. Average error is how many degrees your clicks miss by. Under 20 degrees is sharp, 20 to 40 is normal for generic HRTF, and past 60 means the cue is not landing for you. Accuracy is the share of rounds you nailed within 30 degrees. Front/back swaps count the rounds where you got the side right but flipped front and back. It's the axis stereo gives you least of, so a few are expected. A pile means you should lean on left and right instead. After each guess the radar draws the real spot in red and your click in blue, with a line between them, so the miss is visible. In Track mode the mean error is your average gap from the moving sound across the whole run.

FAQ

Do I need a 7.1 surround headset for this test?

No. Plain stereo headphones work, and most pros run stereo for competitive FPS, because virtual 7.1 adds processing that smears the cue you're trying to read. The test uses HRTF to place sound in 3D over any stereo pair.

Why can't I use speakers?

HRTF bakes the directional cues into the left and right channels for your two ears. Over speakers each ear hears both channels, the cues cancel out, and the sound just sits in front of you.

Why do I keep confusing front and back?

Front and back share almost the same left/right balance, so your brain separates them from the shape of your outer ear. Browser HRTF is generic and skips that, which makes front and back the hardest axis. Left and right stay reliable.

Does this test my headphones or my ears?

Both at once. Everyone gets the same generic HRTF, so a clear, wide pair plus trained ears scores well, while a muddy headset or a rushed guess shows up as a bigger angle error.

Will it help me hear footsteps in games?

It trains the same skill. Picking a direction from a short footstep and committing fast is exactly what you do in Valorant or CS2, and the radar tells you when your gut was wrong.