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HumanBenchTests

Hearing · screening indicator, not a diagnosis

Hearing Test

This online hearing test sweeps pure tones from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, one ear at a time, and finds the highest frequency you can still detect at a fixed comfortable volume. Calibrate first — the step below exists so the reading means something and so nothing is played louder than it should be. Wired headphones, please: Bluetooth and phone speakers both destroy the top of the range.

Step 1 of 2 · Calibration

Set your volume before the first tone

Turn your volume down before you press play. Sustained exposure above about 85 dB damages hearing, and headphones reach that easily. If any tone in this test is uncomfortable, stop — a loud tone tells you nothing extra and the discomfort is a warning, not a result.
  1. Put on wired headphones. Bluetooth codecs roll the top octave off entirely.
  2. Set your system volume to roughly a quarter.
  3. Play the 1 kHz reference below and raise the volume only until it is clearly audible and comfortable — not loud.
  4. Leave the volume there for the whole test. Changing it invalidates the sweep.

What this hearing test can and cannot measure

Worth being blunt about this, because most online hearing tests are not. A browser can generate a pure tone at an exact frequency — that part is trivially accurate, since the oscillator is driven by the audio clock. What it cannot do is know how loud that tone is when it reaches your eardrum.

Headphone sensitivity varies by more than 20 decibels between models. The operating system volume is unknown to the page. Any equaliser, spatial audio processing or loudness normalization in the chain changes the level again, frequency by frequency. A clinical audiogram solves this with calibrated transducers in a sound-treated booth, and there is no software substitute.

So this page reports what survives that limitation: the highest frequency you detect at a fixed level, and the difference between your two ears. Both are genuinely informative. What you will not find here is a decibel figure or an audiogram, because producing either would mean inventing a measurement.

Highest audible frequency by age

The top of the hearing range falls with age in a remarkably consistent pattern — roughly a kilohertz per decade from the twenties onward. This is why 17 kHz “mosquito” deterrents work: the tone is audible to teenagers and inaudible to most people over thirty.

Typical highest audible frequency by age bracket
Highest tone detectedTypical ofNote
19 kHzUnder 20Very few people past their teens still detect 19 kHz, even with intact hearing.
17 kHzUnder 2517–18 kHz is the range commercial 'mosquito' deterrents were designed to exploit.
16 kHzUnder 3016 kHz is typically the first rung to go, usually in the late twenties.
15 kHzUnder 4015 kHz remaining is unremarkable through the thirties.
13 kHzUnder 50Speech intelligibility is unaffected at this point — nothing in speech lives here.
11 kHzUnder 60Still far above the 8 kHz top of the standard clinical audiogram.
8 kHz60 and over, or noise exposure8 kHz is the highest frequency a standard clinical audiogram tests. Losing it is common with age or after loud-noise exposure.

How to take the test properly

  1. Wired headphones, over-ear or in-ear. Bluetooth codecs discard the top octave to save bandwidth, and speakers let both ears hear both channels, which destroys the per-ear measurement entirely.
  2. Quiet room. Background noise masks quiet tones, and the masking is worst exactly where the answer lives.
  3. Calibrate at 1 kHz and then leave the volume alone. Changing the volume part-way through means the second half of the sweep is a different experiment from the first.
  4. Turn off equalisers, spatial audio and loudness normalization. Each one changes the level per frequency, which is precisely the variable being held fixed.
  5. Run each ear separately. The comparison between them is the most useful thing this test produces.

If the very top of the range is silent for you, do not read anything into it before checking the hardware — try a second pair of headphones. Once you have a result, the reaction time test and color blind test are the other two instruments here that measure a sense rather than a skill.

Hearing test questions

Can an online hearing test be accurate?

It can measure the shape of your hearing honestly — the highest frequency you still detect, and whether your two ears differ. It cannot measure loudness in any absolute sense, because no web page knows your headphone sensitivity or your system volume, and so cannot know the sound pressure level at your eardrum. That is why this page reports frequencies rather than decibels hearing level, and never draws an audiogram.

What is the normal human hearing range?

20 Hz to 20 kHz is the textbook figure, and it describes a healthy young ear under ideal conditions. In practice very few adults past their mid-twenties detect anything above 16 kHz, and the top of the range falls steadily with age — a process called presbycusis.

Why can't I hear the low frequencies?

Almost always the equipment, not you. Laptop speakers, phone speakers and most earbuds produce essentially nothing below about 150 Hz, and small drivers physically cannot move enough air to. If 20 Hz and 40 Hz are silent, that is the playback chain being measured, not your hearing.

How loud should the test be?

Clearly audible and comfortable — no louder. Loudness adds nothing to the measurement: a louder tone will be heard slightly higher up the range, which distorts the result and risks your hearing. NIOSH puts the safe exposure limit at 85 dBA for eight hours, halving the permitted time for every 3 dB above that, and headphones exceed 85 dB easily.

What does it mean if my two ears differ?

It is the most useful thing this test can tell you. Age-related loss is close to symmetric, so a clear gap between ears is the pattern actually worth taking to a clinician. Before you do, swap the headphones left-to-right and repeat — an underperforming driver produces exactly the same pattern and is far more common.

Does hearing loss show up first at high frequencies?

Usually, yes. Both age-related and noise-induced hearing loss typically start in the high frequencies, well above the range that carries speech — which is why the earliest stages go unnoticed for years. A standard clinical audiogram tests only up to 8 kHz, so the very top of the range this page sweeps sits above what a routine hearing test even examines.

Other instruments on this bench

Testing the hardware rather than the person? device tests — scroll, touch, refresh rate and input latency lives on a sister site. And if you want to see through someone else’s eyes rather than screen your own, use the simulate how an image looks to a protan, deutan or tritan viewer.