How to use it
Put on headphones in a quiet room and follow the four steps. The headphone check plays a beep in one ear and asks where you heard it, which catches headphones worn the wrong way round and devices that play the same sound in both ears. Next you set the volume of your device once, using a steady reference tone, so that it sounds like a normal speaking voice. Then choose the quick or the full test.
During the test you hear groups of three short beeps in one ear at random moments. Press “I hear it” every time you hear them, even when they are faint. Each time the page finds the quietest level you can hear at one pitch, a new point appears on the chart. At the end you get a table, a short summary and a reliability note.
Controls
- I hear it: click or tap the big button, or press Space or Enter.
- Pause / Resume: stops the beeps. The test also pauses when you switch tabs and between the two ears.
- Repeat this tone: starts the current frequency again. Skip leaves it out. Stop ends the test and keeps what was measured.
- Show raw levels: switches the chart and table between the approximate hearing level and plain decibels relative to the reference tone.
- Saved runs: the last ten runs stay in this browser. Compare one with the current chart, or delete them.
- Save chart / Save numbers / Print: export the audiogram as a PNG image, the numbers as a CSV file, or print the result.
How it works
An audiogram is a chart of hearing thresholds: for each pitch (frequency, left to right, low to high) it shows the quietest tone a person can just hear. Better hearing is at the top. By convention the right ear is drawn with red circles and the left ear with blue crosses. Headphones are needed because each ear must be tested alone; loudspeakers reach both ears at once.
The page follows the pattern audiologists use by hand, often called “down 10, up 5”. The first tone at each pitch is quiet and gets louder in big steps until you respond. After every response the level drops by 10 dB; after every miss it rises by 5 dB. The threshold is the lowest level at which you respond twice while the level is on its way up. Presses made when no tone was playing are counted as false presses.
A web page cannot measure true decibels. A clinic uses calibrated earphones in a sound-treated booth, so it knows the sound pressure at the eardrum. Here the page only knows the digital level it sends out. How loud that becomes depends on your volume setting and on your headphones, which are louder at some frequencies than at others. So the chart makes an assumption: the reference tone you set to “speaking voice” is taken as about 60 dB, and each threshold is compared with a standard reference curve for young listeners with normal hearing:
A flat line therefore means “normal shape”. Real headphones add their own error of several decibels, and more above 8 kHz, so trust the shape of the curve and the difference between your ears, not the absolute height.
Other limits: there is no masking noise, so if one ear is much worse than the other, the better ear may hear the tone meant for the worse one through the skull. Background noise mostly hides low tones and makes low-frequency thresholds look worse. Wireless headphones and sound “enhancement” features can change or cut off very quiet tones. And the quietest tone the test plays is 90 dB below full scale, close to the limit of 16-bit audio.
Things to try
- Run the quick test twice and compare the runs. Differences of 5 dB between runs are normal.
- Take the full test to see where your high-frequency hearing ends. The highest tones normally fade with age.
- Repeat the test with a fan running: low-frequency points usually get worse.
- Compare two pairs of headphones. The change in curve shape is mostly the headphones, not your ears.
- Switch to raw levels to see how much louder low and very high tones must be than a 1 kHz tone.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a medical hearing test?
No. It is uncalibrated and cannot diagnose anything. If you are worried about your hearing, or the test shows a clear difference between your ears, see a doctor or an audiologist. A sudden drop in hearing needs a doctor urgently.
Why can I not hear the highest tones?
The upper limit of hearing falls with age; many adults hear nothing at 16 kHz, and some not at 12.5 or 14 kHz. Many headphones are also weak up there. An arrow pointing down means you did not respond even at the loudest level the test plays.
Why must I leave the volume alone?
Every point is measured relative to the reference tone. Changing the volume in the middle shifts all later points by the same amount and makes the chart meaningless.
What does the reliability note mean?
It combines the number of presses made when no tone was playing with, in the full test, how closely a second measurement at 1 kHz matches the first.
Is anything sent to a server?
No. The tones are made in your browser and results stay on your device.