We got a lot of positive feedback on our Can You Hear Like a Teenager? article, and it inspired us to take it just a little bit further.
Check your hearing with a list of tones that go from 8Hz all the way up to 22,000Hz. It’s fairly common for people who are over 25 years of age to not be able to hear above 15kHz and also experience some level of hearing loss or hearing damage such as tinnitus. This online test will help you find out where your high frequency hearing cuts off.
Musicians have a much higher risk of hearing loss that most people do, and many of us don’t really wear proper hearing protection. Even just listening to an iPod for an extended period of time can permanently damage your hearing. We also gradually lose our high-frequency hearing as we age.
Take our online hearing test: listen to each of these tones and let us know where your hearing cuts out. Make sure to turn the volume down on your headphones or speakers and gradually turn them up to a safe level.
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8 kHz
10 kHz 12 kHz 14 kHz 15 kHz 16 kHz |
17 kHz
18 kHz 19 kHz 20 kHz 21 kHz 22 kHz |
Importance of Hearing Protection
If you’re around loud music a lot like I am, or if you are experiencing some hearing loss, I highly recommend getting a pair of hearing protection earplugs.
The Etymotic earlplugs don’t muffle the sound like conventional earplugs – they basically give you the same frequency response as without, but with a bit lower volume. If I wear them out to a club, they also help me carry on a conversation without yelling. Etymotic earbuds are also great in that they isolate your ear so you don’t have to turn up the volume as much on your MP3 player (ambient noise is one of the biggest reasons we turn up the volume). I love mine.
I can hear up to 22khz with the volume up on my speakers. But 21 and 22 didn’t seem as high somehow. I found 17 was more of a feeling and probably the most painful. I have a slight headache now after all that!
I am quite sensitive to pitches, electrical sounds are constantly getting on my nerves and when I was younger and passing a particular house on my street I would get quite a painful reaction to the garage from a device he used to keep cats away apparently.
I’m 25 and I think I’m still quite sensitive to these sounds. when on a bat walk they told us some (not many) people are about to hear the bats without a detector. I couldn’t unfortunately but interesting to know that some people can hear those frequencies (around 45khz for the ones we were detecting)
No-one should take seriously a online hearing test, it is a useful guide in determining parameters of your hearing frequency.
Audiologists and Audiotometrists should give you a complete and functional assessment, if you are at concerned you may not be able to detect certain frequencies .
I found it within the Parameters of my own results in a quiet environment NOT soundproofed. Good luck and have fun.
Ok, so this is what I found using a KRK Rocket studio monitors and an audiophile sound card.
I can hear every frequency range up to and including 21khz with the volume turned right up. Strangely 21khz is louder than 20khz although that may be the acoustics of the room.
17 18 and 19 khz are piercing at normal volumes and give me a bad headache. I really have to crank the gain up to hear 20 and 21 khz. I can hear something at 22khz but I’m guessing its a harmonic.
I’m 30 and have been listing to loud music all my life, djing for 15 years in loud clubs with high pressure headphones and producing electronic music at home. I noticed my hearing was starting to fade so I had them syringed last year – what a revelation. I highly recommend it.
I can barely hear 14 khz and im only 15years old. I am a musician though.
I’m a musician (hobby) with a very good ability to tune instruments and pin down unwanted noises from guitar setup etc. But at 59 the highest frequency I hear as a pure musical note using whatever headphones I can find, is 12KHz. I can hear 14 and 15 as a ‘ghost’ of a higher note, beyond this there is so much lower harmonic sound being generated I can’t really detect the source pitch. If I concentrate, I can hear what I believe to be the generated frequency up to 19KHz but it’s so faint I could not call it hearing. Even in the quietest room of the house, other things as common as light bulbs are adding their own sounds and I don’t have any tight-fitting earbud headphones, or any fully enclosed (I have always preferred open back sets so that I can at least be spoken to!). The test is impossible on my iMac as it makes so much noise. I’d have to switch the power off for the house to get any kind of silence.
I can, however, hear most so-called inaudible dog whistles. And the cat is completely unbothered by my playing all the higher frequencies direct out of a laptop. Maybe it just is not reproducing them.
I visited here when investigating auto gain defeating systems for DSLR video. They use 20KHz noise on one of the stereo inputs to ‘fix’ the gain and you are supposed to use the other side as a mono track, deleting the AGC-defeat signal track. Since 20KHz is effectively inaudible, I don’t see why it should not just be played into the stereo mic input both channels, and removed by using a narrow band 20KHz cut filter.
David
Turned my speakers up a bit (not a lot) to listen:
I am 46 and always had good hearing.
8 and 10 were painful, felt like going to the Dentist!
I could hear up to and including 16. Called in my 6 year old son – come here boy and test my computer sound :-). He could hear up to and including 20, easily. After this point the speakers are probably not doing much so he couldnt hear those.
Guess age and loud stuff when I was younger is kickin in now – pfff.
Good fun test, and useful too.
It has also made me realise I can convert my CDs to MP3 without worrying about sound quality – because I cant hear top end anymore – ah well a silver lining to my cloud…
I’m an old 55 and listend to a lot of loud music back in the 70’s and 80’s. I can hear 8 with both ears. I can hear 10 with my right ear, but not my left.
What’s that you’re sayin’ sonny?
Oh, and I meant to say that crickets appear to chirp at about 10 — I can hear them with my right, but not my left ear. That’s how I discovered I am loosing my hearing.
Well i for one is about to turn 21 and hate my range of hearing trie to download the 23khz no probs at all hearing it and beeing within a 10meters range of a old fat tv is close to unbarable thankfully flat ones generate allot less sound. honestly i consider thoose with a tad worse hearing the lucky ones and by that i mean is you don’t have to get anoyed when the laptop charger is plugged in or if your sitting to close to a lamp becaus you can actualy hear the power flowing trough the filament
whats even more annoying is that it is probebly going to be another 10 years b4it stops bothering me even though i’ll probebly still be able to hear some of it.
I’m 47 and can just about hear the 14 test. I wondered though if it’s my hearing that has blunted or just my sound equipment. Im just using a cr*ppy PC with onboard audio…
Im 14 and I heard all of them except the last one… My cat kind of freaking out though… XD
To reply to the comment made earlier:
I read that a great musician can hear even at 20khz!!! LOL … That’s epic…
Beethoven was went deaf so it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have the music inside your head!
I can hear up to 15 on my good and 14 on my bad ear 😐 I’m 27 and been in some loud clubs, had a starting pistol shot off next to my bad ear twice, and been close to big ass firecrackers going off.
I’m using zenheiser hd 555 headphones and using a soundblaster on linux. The drivers might not be perfect but I think it could be correct. If I had to trade the lost frequencies for the experiences loud music gave me then I’d do it again 🙂
I can hear through 12 just fine, then nothing at 14, but I can hear, faintly, 15. This seems odd. Both ears respond the same, separately or together.
I am 23 and I could hear up to 20khz but 21 and 22 were a negative.
Former Navy fighter pilot now airline pilot 57yo raised on Jimi Hendrix et al. 12K is the highest I can hear. Can’t use any wristwatch alarm because they no longer “compute”. Bummer!
i can only hear up to the 15 kHz, my 10 year old son can hear up to 19 kHz, and my 6 year old daughter can hear up to 17 kHz.
I could only hear up to the 15 kHz. But, im 40 so i don’t know if im doing good or not.
I’m 40, with a history of using loud car stereos, and I can hear all of them loudly and clearly. I think something’s wrong with the recordings. Isn’t the pitch supposed to sound like it’s continuously going up when you increase the frequency? 22K sounds lower than alot of the others. Maybe they’re mislabeled or something.
I’m 18. I’m a professional musician from Russia, I hear 22kHz 🙂
I was able to hear till 21 KHz clearly. I could hear 22 KHz as well but it phased in and out. I did this using headphones. I guess I’m lucky to be able to hear this range at 26. I do try to take care of my ears though and try to minimise their exposure to loud noises. But then, nowadays walking on the street damages your hearing bit by bit 🙁
human ears can only hear to about 20hKz max. if you are in the 18-19 range, you are doing fine.
im 16 and i can only hear something up to 15 kHz
What bloody bulls***.
All those that say there is noise etc should get their ear cleaned!
These are pure sine wave test tones, and don’t habe any noise (noise floor would be -100 dB) – you don’t believe, why don’t you download and open the file with any digital audio editor.
I can;t hear anything above 14kHz
:'(
Many soundcards are aliasing the frequencies above 16khz so the test may FAIL. If soundcard is aliasing then sine wave is not reconstructed correctly and the frequency will be different and will sound like noise. It is more a soundcard and speaker test as it is hearing test.
Hi, I’m 34, male, with perfect vision. I can hear all the above sounds, in fact in a more scientific test I’ve been able to hear sounds all the way up to 25 khz, I’ve recently bought a cat scarer which pulses from 18k to 27k and I hear most of the sounds it produces, albeit very quietly. So I guess there’s nothing wrong with my hearing either! 🙂
Hey, I tested these frequencies with a frequency meter and it seems they are quite accurate! Interesting comments by the way…
I used to have great hearing until i poked a whole in my eardrum. Now its worse, but i could still hear them all. Although i couldn’t hear 22k i could feel the vibration in my ears (If its of any importance i had the sound volume lowest possible and my computers volume midway).
question: would ones hearing improve when listening to tones above 15000hz
like evolution of dogs and cats can hear better because they are more attentive than we to such sounds
could we increase our hearing by listenening to such sound at very low volume?
just a question 🙂
My 11-year-old daughter and I took it (I’m 46). I could hear the tones pretty easily up to to 17 but 18 and 19 were a stretch for me. She heard up to 20. Lately I’ve felt as if my hearing’s not as good as it used to be so this was kind of reassuring.
I can listen to 21 kHz easily, but my radio can’t play this freq. I need use the phone, but it doesn’t play more 22kHz. I have 14 years old and I don’t like listen music very loud.
Why not just provide audio file downloads instead of making your website horrible by excessive use of an oudated techonology (flash)?
I am 38 years old. I cannot hear anything over 14. Too many rock concerts in my teen years???
39, and I could hear through 17. 18 was perceptible, and the only way I could “hear” 19 was because I noticed a drop-off in the ringing in my ears I have from tinnitus, which picked back up again when the sound ended.
I listened on a laptop with mid-grade studio monitors, with a lot of background noise. I have better equipment but can’t get to it right now.
I have tinnitus from years and years surrounded by very loud music in clubs and concerts or in cars with loud systems, or just with headphones or earbuds jammed in my ears. It’s a wonder I can hear at all, especially the frequencies that I can. Take care of your ears, kids!
In terms of music you shouldn’t terrible worry if you can’t hear these high ranges as they are very rare in music.
For example most musical instruments don’t go past 4khz and humans can only sing up to about 2khz.
Extreme low bass on the other hand occurs much more often.
Age 43, sennheiser earphones, I can hear up to 17 but not 18. It appears I am not as deaf as I thought I was… and this is after YEARS of aural abuse with loud metal on the Walkman as a teen and young adult.
I’m not sure hear is the right word for what I’m doing, but I am aware of all frequencies and the top ones really hurt my head. Also, I hear 21 kH just about every day. It’s bad when I’m normal, but when I have a headache it makes me sick. Literally.
as i can’t hear the 14 kHz, i don’t like these high tones at all so i don’t care about the loss to hear those, but doesn’t it mean my other hearing might be affected too?
I Can hear up to 19KHZ and i am 33 i have always enjoyed Relay loud bass and very Hi quality mid and hi,s and also there is a factor to loud sounds and pure tones. i am heavy in to car audio and there is a thresh hold that you can tolerate hi volume for only so long and you get a headache. i have been in 150+ DB environments and i have great hearing My apology for my spelling it is nutroshis. The groups of people i hang around with call it developing your hearing almost like working a mussel we do listen to hi volume and it seams that are hearing is in fact becoming more attuned as we can hear things we could not before. i is strange but it is something all of us experience as we listen to a clean signal we have seen that people that listen to distorted music at high volumes tend to have a hard time hearing but if you listen at the same volume on very high quality sound system there is no negative repercussions that we have experienced. and this is after many many years of observation. Now no way am i a doctor and in no way do i understand the inner working of the ear completely but i do believe that people as a hole do not always respond the same way to everything namely me and my car audio crew we do take sound test and pass with impeccable flying colors why others that do not listen to loud music fail badly, its kinda like were born for it.
Nice test!!! really enjoyed
My 32 years old hears heard up to 17kHz easily, and barely heard the 18kHz.
Friends at work: A 34 years old heard up to 14kHz and a 38 heard up to 12kHz. Both are men, does it matter?
I’m 25 and heard up to 17kHz – on subsequent recordings I could hear some lower pitched background noise instead of a high frequency.
I don’t actually have very good hearing… well, having said that I have always been able to hear fairly high frequencies, especially when I was in high school. I’m just no good at hearing specific sounds when there is a lot of background noise – like when I’m talking to a person in a busy place, I have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot because I can’t make out their voices properly.
My Dad is the same, so I seem to have inherited whatever’s wrong with my ears/brain.
First, I’m 24 and my ears are in really good shape, they got tested to doctors because i heared things that other people didn’t/couldn’t. Second, i have a brand new Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty with also brand new Bose headphones (so, the combination is perfect, isn’t it?). I disabled all the effects (crystallizer, CMSS-3D, etc…). I didn’t used the sounds here because i think they are compressed so they lose quality. I made my owns. I can “hear” at 21khz but with absolutely no surrounding sounds and with high concentration. I’ve switched from 20khz(perfectly audible) to 21khz(audible between heartbeats) just to be sure it was really a sound i was hearing. So, yeah, it’s possible to hear 21khz but don’t expect the sound to be loud even if it’s at high decibel, and don’t try to listen it at high decibel, even if you don’t hear it, it still can damage your ear.
I’m 57 and can still hear 15KHz, but not these tones here. There seems to be some sort of aliasing going on; probably my sound card. So I went ahead and plugged my AF signal generator into my hifi to check my hearing. 15K is perceptible, but nothing over. Which is a miracle at my age, considering all the hard rock I’ve listened to.
If you hear something other than a pure ringing sensation on the frequencies above about 10K, probably your sound card can’t play these high frequencies properly.
I used a Claro Halo soundcard on WIN7 and some Sony XB700s. I can hear up to 16khz on volume 22, I’m 19.I can hear everything if i turn up the volume high enough but what’s the point of that, i don’t listen to music at that high of volume, I don’t think anyone does. People should post what they hear at a relatively normal music volume.
16-17kHz somewhere between these two values is my upper limit. I tested using ASUS Xonar DS soundcard and an AIWA stereo with 3-way speaker and 35W. I’m 26 years and I listen to very loud music every week at my home(Techno, Trance, Hardcore), but I’m not using headphones at all. I guess that’s why I still hear pretty well. I read that a great musician can hear even at 20khz!!! LOL … That’s epic… I’m curious about the sound levels animals hear 🙂 A Bat, a wolf, a dolphin, I think they understand music better than humans x:D
My 9 year old can hear 19 kHz, my 8 year old can hear 16kHz, and my 41 year old ears can hear 14 kHz. Interestingly, the 9 year old has vision problems. Good to know his ears are working overtime!
f***… im 21. wearing beats by dre to listen to this. and i cant hear above 14. might be a lil def i think. too much bass culture music probably the cause of this
Beats by Dr.Dre aren’t made for these kind of sounds. They are made for rap and hip-hop, which is bass and mid sounds based. So don’t expect to hear something as high as these!
Beats by Dre have a frequency response of 20hz-20Khz, so they actually can play those tones. Hope that didn’t come off to matter-of-factly, just a clarification!
While true that they have a frequency response, it’s not a flat frequency curve. Meaning that some frequencies are played louder than others. This is normal, every headphone have this. This is why some headphones are called bassy, some are called trebley, some are called neutral, V-shaped, mid-centric, and so on.
Beats by Dre are definitely bassy, meaning that there’s a compromise made by design to make them bassy. It could very well be that they have a very quiet frequency response at higher frequencies.
Try a similarly priced Grado, Denon or Ultrasone and see if their frequency response is louder at higher frequencies.
You can look at graphs of this at headphone.com
That said, I wouldn’t trust results coming from Beats by Dre headphones. They are barely mid-fi in the land of headphones, despite their high price tag. Most Hi-Fi headphones start somewhere around $800 and goes up to thousands and thousands of dollars, like the upcoming Final Audio Design Muramasa at $8000 (yes, eight thousand dollars).
Mid-Fi headphones usually start somewhere around $150-$200 and up.
Lo-Fi like Beats by Dre usually stay under $150, except for the Beats by Dre, but the Beats are a celebrity headphone meaning that their price is not meant for the sound quality, but for the “hip status” they provide among friends, and so on. In other words, Beats by Dre are “bling-bling” for young people.
This is because Beats by Dre use cheap drivers so their ability to reproduce sound cleanly is poor, very poor. If anything I’d say they are able to reproduce most of the frequencies hearable after a notable amount of sound loss, everything above that is severely rolled off.
im 13 and i can hear 17khz easily but nothing at 18khz ???????
With a set of in-the-ear ‘phones I can try each ear by itself: My left ear I can barely hear 12Khz, in my right ear I can hear 12Khz but 14Khz only when I dial the volume to max. After 14Khz, nothing. I am 42. I think if I’d taken care of my hearing I’d have done better. Moral: If you’re ever going to see Motorhead in concert take some earplugs! It may not be cool to wear them but it’s cooler than it is to miss the finer point of what people are trying to communicate to you for the rest of your life!
No kidding, saw them once at a local club and it was the only time I’ve ever asked for a set of plugs, lol. And I thought Fear Factory was loud!!
im 22, i can hear to 20..i tink i can make 21 wit a better sound card and headphones tho
I’m 23 years old. I could hear up to 18 clearly, 19 is debatable. I could feel the vibrations on my ear drum I think and it felt like a whistle inside my head. I dunno, it was odd. Same with 20 and 21.
I can hear them all on ”normal” speaking volume I’m 18 Years and have high quality speecers (Excuse my spelling XD) I saw on some on the first half of comments (didint read the rest) that some ppl are….very stuborn that no-one can hear over the 20khz but…I hear em all clear, theyre not painfully loud to me that I also saw someone write, thogh if i increase the volume they might be XD. but anyways to those stubborn people , have you got in mind that every persons genes arent exactly the same as the people you took these test’s on? no need to be superhuman, I have a worse vision but better hearing, if that has something to do whit it 😛 so…If you say I can’t hear over 20khz…you’r tests are proven wrong or you’r just making things up, I also tried this with 2 Different headphones at the same and lower volume, (difrent headphones 😛 1okay one and a realy goodone xD) and I still Heard both 21kHz and 22kHz. so The human ear CAN take up 21kHz and 22kHz IF you have good genes for hearing
So here’s the thing:
#1 MOST regular / average speakers may claim to have a frequency response exceeding the 20Khz you mentioned.
-However- even IF they are able to reproduce that frequency, they are not likely to provide enough sound pressure for someone to hear it.
I.E. you have to have a set of speakers that are designed to reproduce that high a frequency loud enough to actually be audible. (that doesn’t mean turn the volume up as loud as it will go, either.)
#2) The average human can hear up to and just around the 20 – 22 KHz frequencies provided the qualifications mentioned above are met.
In order to hear these high frequencies you must have REALLY GOOD HEARING, and not just be “young”.
I am a 46 year old musician and studio hack.
I own a pair of M-Audio studio reference monitors in my recording studio. They have a frequency range up to 20 Khz. and are pretty flat in their response. (meaning that all frequencies in the speakers range are supposedly reproduced at the same pressure they were asked to.)
I cant exactly say I “heard” the 20 Khz signal, but I did feel it. I definitely didn’t hear the 21 Khz signal- my speakers wont reproduce it. In fact, I could feel all the samples above 20 Khz, but I could only imagine that each one was a higher tone.
This is a text book example of what happens when you exceed your speakers capabilities. If you do exceed them, but you can feel it ( cause there’s no possible way for you to actually hear it ) then your speakers are receiving the signal but are incapable of reproducing it with any real sound pressure or accuracy. This doesn’t mean your speakers are junk or that they are the greatest, it just means you asked it to do more than it can.
If you take a 1979 Ford Pinto out on the highway and ask it to go 140 MPH you better be on a steep downward slope to even get close. you may get to 100, but its gonna take a bit and it sure isn’t gonna give you good steering and traction.
A very good point, but don’t forget that this are compressed samples. This has a number of effects on the sound as well.
1: Most compressors are designed for music and speech reproduction, not for pure tone replication. They won’t be geared to reproduce these high notes and in some compressors those frequencies would be filtered out, to save space.
2: as stated above the compressors are not designed for pure tone especially at those high notes, so your likely hearing a resonance of that frequency rather than the frequency it’s self.
For all this who can hear 19+ there is a lot of background noise and iinterference on these recordings. They are not well done.
Many who say they can hear frequencies+20 are picking up this.
I too can hear frequencies but they are not 19 20 21 22.
The test tones are flawed.
I cant hear 19+ but i tested it with my golden Retriever that was sleeping near my notebook and was really interesting to see it wake up with the 22, like she nevere heared something like that…
You are correct, 19khz and above can not be heard through my laptop speakers because the speakers could not reproduce sounds this high on the frequency range. I am 30 years old and could here them all except 19khz and above, i had my dog next to me and he was asleep, he could not hear 19khz and above either, it was when i played 18khz that his ears perked up and he looked directly at the laptop. I haven’t tried yet, but try playing the sounds through a stereo that is capable of reproducing that high of a frequency and see if you can hear. My guess is since these are so flawed you will be able to.
I recommend that no one takes this test seriously unless you have a really decent soundcard/headset wich ensures this test it’s full quality.
im 23 and i can hear all of them. . .
i 1st thought it was because of the speakers, so i tried headphones and a portable speaker.
but i still heard them all…
it doesn’t shock me because i have to unplug all the cellphone chargers at night because i can hear them making noise, otherwise i can’t sleep…
stuff used:
eeepc 4g surf/xp
Cambridge soundworks sw310
zipy portable speaker
result of all this testing:
MASSIVE headache…
ikr? I can’t sleep if anything is plugged in, sometimes even if things aren’t, because I hear the electricity humming in the walls. I get the worst migraine waiting for the train, because I hear the electricity humming in the cables the train runs on, too. It’s awful…
Hi, do you hear those high pitched noises even when there is no train and when your outside not near housing? I’m trying to find out what the high pitched sound I hear all the time, I am a musician and have been on the road for decades, my Doc says I’m having hearing lose. If I am it’s no where near this loud noise I hear, very bad in the late day, any similarity s? Thanks, any help is good help, God Bless…Eddie
You realize the electric trains run on direct current in the range of 400 – 800 volts. DC doesn’t make noise.
I am the exact same. When i was younger (8yrs old) i told my parents that i could hear the rodent repellers plugged into the sockets, they looked at me as though i was crazy. Im now 20 yrs old and i still hear them. They make me cry with the pain when im in the house. Its hard to plug them out because i saw a mouse in my room that same night i plugged it out. I live in the countryside in Ireland so there’s alot of mice and rats especially.