Hearing frequency test — how high can you hear?

How to use the hearing test

1. Put on headphones and lower your device volume.
2. Choose the Ear to test (Both, Left or Right) and a Sweep: 500 Hz → 20 kHz, 1 kHz → 20 kHz, or 8 kHz → 20 kHz (high end).
3. Pick Steps: 2, 3 or 6 per octave. More steps give a finer answer but take longer. Leave Tone level low; it runs from 1% to 30% and starts at 8%.
4. Press Start. Each tone lasts 1.5 seconds. Answer I heard it (key H) or Not heard (key N). Play again (key R) repeats the tone.
5. At the end the page shows the highest tone you heard and where you first missed.

What it does and when to use it

People often wonder why teenagers hear a high whine that adults miss, or whether new earbuds reach the top of the range. This sweep gives a rough answer. Use it out of curiosity or to compare two pairs of headphones on the same day.

It cannot measure hearing loss, and a good or poor result says nothing about your hearing at the frequencies used for speech. To play any single frequency for as long as you like, use the tone generator; to check that left and right channels are the right way round, use the audio playback tester.

How it works

The steps are spaced evenly on a musical scale, so each octave (a doubling of frequency) gets the same number of tones. Frequencies are rounded: to 10 Hz below 1 kHz, to 100 Hz up to 10 kHz, and to 500 Hz above that. The browser’s Web Audio API makes each tone with an oscillator, fades it in and out so it does not click, and pans it to the ear you chose. Nothing is recorded and no answers leave the page.

Your result is the highest step you heard before your first miss. If you miss 12,500 Hz but then say you heard 16,000 Hz, the result stays at the last tone below the miss. That way one lucky guess cannot raise the result.

Worked examples

The step lists below come from the tool’s own function.

• Default sweep, 3 per octave: 17 tones. 500, 630, 790, 1000, 1300, 1600, 2000, 2500, 3200, 4000, 5000, 6300, 8000, 10000, 12500, 16000 and 20000 Hz. Answering yes up to 12,500 and no to 16,000 and 20,000 ends the test with a result of 12,500 Hz.
• High end, 6 per octave: 9 tones. 8000, 9000, 10000, 11500, 12500, 14500, 16000, 18000 and 20000 Hz. It narrows down a top limit.
• 1 kHz → 20 kHz, 2 per octave: 10 tones, the fastest run.

Limits and tips

• Use a quiet room. Background noise hides quiet high tones.
• Unsure about your speakers? Open the audio spectrum analyzer in Microphone mode on a second device to see whether a high tone comes out at all. Phone microphones lose the very top too.
• The default sweep jumps from 16 kHz to 20 kHz. Use the 8 kHz sweep at 6 steps per octave for finer detail at the top.
• Never use a loud level. If a tone is uncomfortable, stop and lower the volume.