Online Hearing Test (Frequency Range)

What this hearing check is, and what it is not

Consider it a curiosity with real physics behind it. The page plays pure tones and asks when you stop hearing them. That tells you something about how your headphones and your ears behave together at that moment, and it can be a fun way to see how high your hearing reaches. It does not diagnose anything, and it cannot tell you that your hearing is healthy or that it is not.

A proper hearing test is carried out by an audiologist or a clinic, using calibrated equipment in a controlled room, with sounds delivered at known levels. That is the only way to measure your hearing thresholds reliably. If you have any worry about your hearing, such as ringing, a feeling of blocked ears, trouble following speech in a crowd, or a sudden change in one ear, speak to a doctor or an audiologist rather than relying on a web page.

Please use the results here only as a rough, personal observation. A number that looks low or high carries no medical meaning on its own.

There is also a limit in the other direction. Hearing a tone at 18 kHz on good headphones does not prove that all is well, because everyday hearing problems often show up first in the mid-range, in noisy places, or in one ear. A frequency sweep does not examine any of that.

How the sweeps and single tones work

There are two sweeps. The high sweep climbs from 2 kHz to 20 kHz over 40 seconds. The low sweep descends from 250 Hz to 20 Hz over 25 seconds. During either, you press the button marked as the point where you can no longer hear the sound, and the page records the frequency at that instant.

Single tones, from 250 Hz up to 20 kHz, let you check one frequency at a time. They are good for confirming a result, because it is easier to decide whether you hear one steady tone than to react to a moving one. If you stop hearing the sweep at 15 kHz, play a tone at 14 kHz and then at 16 kHz, and see whether your answer agrees.

Your reaction time shifts the result slightly. A sweep keeps climbing while you decide to press, so the recorded number is usually a little higher than the true fade point on the way up, and a little lower on the way down. Running each sweep a few times and comparing the numbers gives a better idea than any single press.

The low sweep behaves differently from the high one. Down near 20 to 40 Hz you may feel the sound in your chest or the headband before you hear it, and many headphones simply cannot move enough air there. If you press as soon as the tone seems to vanish, you are probably measuring the headphones, so play 60 Hz and 100 Hz with the tone generator to see where they begin to speak.

Why your equipment limits the answer

The most important caveat is that headphones and speakers are not equal to the full range. Many earbuds roll off above 16 kHz and below 40 Hz, and laptop speakers and small Bluetooth speakers give almost nothing under 100 Hz. If a tone cannot be reproduced, you will not hear it, however good your ears are.

That means two people with identical hearing can get different results on different gear, and one person can get different results on two pairs of headphones. Compare ears using the same headphones, and treat a sudden drop as more informative than an absolute number. A pair that fades out at 14 kHz may simply be unable to play higher.

The table in the Numbers tab shows how long the sound waves are in air at the test frequencies. Short waves at the top of the range are easily blocked by the fit of an earbud or the angle of a headphone, so reseating them can change what you hear. Low tones need an air seal and a driver able to move enough air, which is why a loose fit hurts the bass more than anything else.

What usually happens at the high end

The upper limit of hearing tends to fall as people get older, and it also depends on a lifetime of noise exposure, genetics and general health. A young listener in good health may follow a sweep close to 20 kHz on capable headphones. Many adults reach lower frequencies than that, and a limit well under 20 kHz is common and is not by itself a sign of a problem.

Two things are worth knowing. First, the top octave contributes little to understanding speech, since the key information in voices sits well below 8 kHz, so a lower limit does not mean you hear less of what people say. Second, a limit that differs strongly between your ears, or one that has moved noticeably over a short time, deserves a professional check.

No chart on this page promises what a given age should hear. Ranges quoted online differ and rest on different equipment, and you are not being compared with anyone.

Setting a safe volume

Start with the volume turned all the way down and raise it slowly until you can just hear a tone at 1 kHz. Sweeps and tones can be sharp, especially high ones, and a tone that is unpleasant is a tone that is too loud. The page lets you set the level, so keep it at the lowest comfortable value and never turn it up to chase a tone that fades.

As a general listening guideline, long sessions at high volume can damage hearing, so keep headphone levels moderate and take breaks. If a tone ever feels painful, stop at once. Do not leave headphones on a child's ears for this check without adult supervision of the volume.

Do not test in a noisy place and compensate by raising the volume. Instead, find a quiet room, close the door and turn off fans.

Pure tones can be more tiring than music at the same level, since the ear has no variety to rest on. Keep each session short, rest for a few minutes between sweeps, and finish with quiet. If your ears feel full or ring afterwards, stop for the day and avoid loud sound until it clears; if it does not clear, see a doctor or an audiologist.

Getting a cleaner result

Use wired headphones if you have them, because Bluetooth codecs can limit the top of the range. Turn off sound enhancements such as bass boost or spatial effects in your system settings, and switch off active noise cancelling if its hiss gets in the way. Sit still, and keep your hair and glasses frames from pressing against the earcups.

Test each ear separately. A difference between ears in the result can come from the headphones just as easily as from you, so swap the headphones around and see if the difference follows the ear or the earcup.

Run the check at a similar time of day and in similar conditions if you want to compare results over weeks. Tiredness, a cold, earwax or a recent loud event can all change what you hear for a while.

Write down your equipment along with your numbers: the headphone model, wired or wireless, and the volume setting. A result without that note is hard to interpret a month later, when you have forgotten which headphones you used.

Why people try this check

Curiosity is the usual reason. People want to know if they can hear the mosquito-like high pitch that is famous online, or whether their new headphones reach as far as the box says. It is also a useful way to learn how pitch relates to frequency, because you hear a low rumble at 30 Hz, a clear tone at 1 kHz and a thin whistle at 15 kHz, and you can feel where the sound stops being a tone and becomes nothing.

Musicians and producers sometimes use it to find out how far their monitoring chain really goes before trusting a mix made on it. If a pair of headphones cannot play 40 Hz, a bass line judged on them needs a second check somewhere else.

If your headphones seem fine but your voice sounds thin on calls, the mic test checks the input side of the same setup.

Teachers use sweeps in lessons on sound too, since a class can see a hand go up at different moments and discuss why. That is a good use: it turns an abstract range of numbers into something each person has experienced.

Privacy

Tones are generated by the page on your device and played through your headphones. The frequencies you mark are kept only in the open tab and vanish when you close it, and nothing about your hearing is stored or transmitted anywhere.