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.
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.
17 can hear till 17… I guess listening to my music 24/7 isn’t good, and all those deafening concerts as well aha.
I am 13 and the last one I can hear is 16khz
I’m 34 years old and I can hear every frequency …
is that even possible?
I’m 23 and the last thing I could hear was 14. I don’t listen to mp3 players but I did go to concerts once or twice a week over the past 5 years. The earplugs I wore were nothing but a false sense of security. This really puts me off going to concerts and festivals. And quite frankly, it gets me down.
I’m 21 and can’t hear 18kHz anymore.
Is that… a bad sign?
Oh crap, I’m 15 and I can’t hear past 14.
I don’t use mp3 players or ipods much anymore – I used it during long bus rides etc a few years ago.
I’m guessing I have a hearing problem, and that I should go see the doctor.
I don’t know if this is genetically passed down though – as my mom cannot hear any of the tones at all (she’s 54)
Im 14 and hear all of them . Is it normal ??
Soon to be 45 and 19 is my limit. 13 year old son heard 20, but nit 21.
21 year old sound engineer, can hear the 22kHz… hope it stays that way for a while
I’m 30 and could hear all of them.
I’m 17 and can’t hear above 15……
I’m 23 and could hear up to 19
I’m twelve and can hear up to 22kHz…that makes sense, because whenever someone turns on the television I hear a noise similar to 17 or 18kHz. It’s annoying, hehe.
12 years old, i can hear all but 16. good or bad?
hmm, i’m almost 29, the last one i can hear is 19kHz. oh god, am i that old? 🙂
i can hear all and im 14
im 36 and i heard em all.. weird huh?
I turn 50 in 4months, I could hear 14 but not 15
Im 12 and I can hear all 🙂
wow this sux…im only 15 and cant hear past 16
19, I can hear sounds until 19kHz
I’m 41 and can barely hear 15 on the test so I was worried.
As a double check I loaded Audacity and generated tones at a sample rate of 96K. Audacity at .25 amplitude gave about the same loudness and cutoff freq as the above test with all the gain sliders at max. With the Audacity output pushed to 0.9 (about 12 dB above the web test) I could hear 18K faintly. This demonstrates at least 60dB/oct rolloff but the amplitude still matters. The sensitivity of your speakers or headphones could *easily* push your test results up or down a few KHz. Also I would trust WAV files over MP3s in this freq range. I think this bandwidth is not far from when I was 20 but my tinitus is pretty loud now so I ask people “what” all the time and it’s embarrasing.
I’m 50, I could hear all of them. I played 9 years of violin through school, danced and did gymnastics, had a brother that blasted music to play his drums to, worked in piano/organ sales from 13-16 years old, and attended at least 100 big stadium concerts and several hundred smaller venue concerts. I even slept for over a year in headphones on low volume in my sophomore year of high school. I spent four years playing rock music, fifteen years in various choirs and other performing arts. I used to have a vehicular concert hall of a stereo that I never played louder than was comfortable. I enjoyed target shooting even. I made sure that through all of that which could have caused damage, I always used hearing protection. I’m also glad I was young enough that people were designing music classrooms with regard to hearing protection. One of my most beloved music professors in college was almost completely deaf due to the lack of such protection in the old band room at the school, before they built the newer music building with regard to that.
I feel very grateful that someone told me as a small child to take care of my hearing because once it’s damaged from noise, it’s gone.
I am 59 years old and an audio engineer. I can hear up to 18 kHz clearly using my small computer speakers after that I can notice a discernible change in the overall makeup of the ambient sound field (can hear a change in the overall mix of the tone of the sound in the room) up to 20 kHz, after that even with the studio monitors I have to honestly say my mind creates the sound. One thing in my favor is that I did not grow up in the earbud generation (more like AM radio) and never lived in the city where ambient db levels are regularly higher, or work in a loud factory. The test tone really is pretty nasty at 17 KHz. When people come to my studio I play the tones like these over my studio monitors to get an idea what they can and can not hear. Some are older rockers and many have both some bottom end and top end loss. This way they can better understand if I am trying to fix something in the mix and can’t hear what I am fixing, I can explain it to them that listeners do not always have that same loss as they and should get attention. When I perform I use in-ear monitors at reasonable levels. These do two things good things, first they give you greater detail and dampens down the sound pressure levels on the stage. Potential loss of hearing is amplified (pun intended) by multiple factors two of the most important being, dB’s and amount of time. So protect your hearing so you can hear what I am fixing!!
Well thank you, Now I know what frequency my tinitus rings at. The constant ringing is at 20 khz. I had to crank the volume in my MDRV700s but its there. This is what I have to listen to when I go to bed at night or hell, even now while I type this with headphones still on and nothing playing. Its annoying, but I have learned to deal with it.
Mine is definatley from cranking headphones for 2-3 hours at a time with volume up to where a bomb could go off next door and I would be clueless. Im 44 now. When I was 14 or 15 I took the 1/4″ jack off my Radio Shack headphones and put rca jacks on it and plugged em into the speaker outputs. They rocked very good. Considering back then they used real speakers and not this fancy clear plastic stuff for the cones. New headphones wouldnt last a second like that. But a lesson to all you youngsters that crank it up. Indeed you wont realize the damage until you hit your 40s.
OK, Back to my TooL CD.
No difficulty hearing tones up to 15kHz at low volume but it drops off sharply after that. I can hear 16-21 kHz by upping the volume several notches but can’t hear 22 kHz at all although that may be the sound card or headphones.
I haven’t had a hearing test in decades but I was told I had excellent hearing. So while I may have lost some sensitivity since my early 20’s, I’m quite happy with what I have and hope to keep it for years to come.
I worry about the young people I meet in public whose iPods are turned up so high, I can clearly distinguish the lyrics from 10 feet away.
I’m 46.
I agree you must have a Hifi equipment if you want to avoid undesirable effects that can make you “hear” 18 kHz or more. I’m sure that some people above are just hearing artifacts instead of the real sound.
For those who can’t hear anything above 16-17 kHz (I’m among them, 41 years old, musician and music fan since 15 years old), you must know this:
4000 Hz seems a lot of lack of hearing, but hearing is a logarithmic sense, and that means that, as higher the frequency, the less the sensation of change we experiment. If we take a look at the note frequencies, they are as follow:
C0 16.35 Hz
C#0 +0.97 Hz (+5.593272 %)
D0 +1.03 Hz (+6.299694 %)
Eb0 +1.10 Hz (+6.727828 %)
E0 +1.15 Hz (+7.033639 %)
F0 +1.23 hz (+7.522935 %)
F#0 +1.29 Hz (+7.889908 %)
G0 +1.38 Hz (+8.440367 %)
Ab0 +1.46 Hz (+8.929663 %)
A0 +1.54 Hz (+9.418960 %)
Bb0 +1.64 Hz (+10.030581 %)
B0 +1.73 Hz (+10.581039 %)
C1 +1.83 Hz (+11.192660 %)
C1 is exactly 32.70 Hz. Note that each octave the frequency doubles, so C2 is 65.41 Hz, C3 is 130.81 Hz, C4 is 261.63 Hz, and so on.
If we could expand the piano keys indefinitely, we’d have this:
C9 8,372.02 Hz
…
C10 16,744.04 Hz
C#10 17,680.58 Hz
D10 18,735.40 Hz
Eb10 19,861.91 Hz
E10 21,039.62 Hz
…
C11 33,488.08 Hz
Thus, the next 4 kHz which follow the 16 kHz band sound comprise barely 4 semitones. You can even imagine how a 20 kHz would sound like by playing the additional 4 semitones in your mind. It’s not much what we are missing, can’t you see?)
Best regards.
I’m 29 and an electronic engineer. The sound cards in most computers cannot accurately produce the frequency range on these test on this site.
That being said, I was able to hear each note all the way up to 22KHz.
When I was a child, my hearing at high frequencies was extremely sensitive that I had to actually go to therapy to learn how to control it.
As it stands now, my hear starts to fade out roughly around 32KHz.
It used to be more sensitive fading out around 36KHz.
The comment by “Storyville” is probably the most informative comment here. I can hear the 18khz one, and I think like the 19khz one is there but VERY faint compared to the 18k. You really can only hear past 20khz as a baby.. maybe. I am listening on KRK studio monitors through an external DAC.
Everybody here is definitely hearing harmonics generated by the speakers when listening to those really high ones from like 18-22k. I am listening on KRK studio monitors through an external DAC.
I came here after having an odd problem with my hearing that seems to just have been a wax buildup that has been clearing slowly on it’s own. If you are 18 years old and haven’t been involved in activities that leave your ears ringing very often (such as rock concerts, marching band, shooting guns, drumming) you can probably still hear 17 and 18 pretty well, but most speakers, and even these studio monitors probably cannot hit 20khz as flat as they hit 1khz.
Take care (of your hearing) all! 😉
@A. McKenzie
have fun enjoying your perfect hearing while listening to nothing!
23 years old, musician, go to shows and fly often but I WEAR EAR PLUGS
therefore i can hear the tones fine. if you care about your ears, protect them. it’s as simple as that.
I just listened to the sounds above out of curiosity; I recently realised I experience synaesthesia (I “see” shapes, contours and colours when I hear sounds) and I’m listening to all sorts to see what happens!
Interestingly, I could hear up to 20 perfectly, but not 21 or 22 (though that could be due to my less-than-great soundcard). I could, however, *see* them.
Whilst I’m not a professional musician, I have always been a member of some choir or orchestra, and I’m partial to a bit of loud heavy metal from time to time. I also work in a lab with very noisy machinery (including a sonicator). I don’t think these activities have been particularly damaging to my hearing, so I count myself lucky…
Oh, and I’m 27.
In my early twenties, when I first realised I had some hearing loss, I went for a BUPA test and I was told my hearing was the best they had ever tested. It was better than 5dB from some low frequency to 20 kHz.
At the age of thirty I could hear a 31kHz [yes, I do mean thirty, not twenty] signal in both ears. I don’t know if that was my upper limit, though. I was making computer game music, at the time, and even the whistle of my monitor was painful, let alone the sample screech in my music. It was torment, really…
In my early forties I could still hear a TV’s whistle, as loud as ever, and CD players still mostly sounded either nasty or audibly filtered – or sometimes both – at the top end.
Now in my late forties, having decided belatedly to return to music as a career, I tested my ears with a synth module the other day: 11 kHz in my left ear and just under 14 kHz in my right ear.
With the above test I could hear 10 kHz in my left ear and 15 kHz in my right ear, although I had to locate and orient my head carefully to hear 12 kHz and above. Losing the top octave of my hearing isn’t such a big deal for music but losing another half octave in my left ear is a real problem. If my right ear gets that bad I’m not sure I’ll be able to pursue my present musical aims.
I think that damage was caused not by music, which I always used to listen to at low volume compared with almost everyone, but by living with my elderly parents and having to cope with the noise they make as a result of their own poor hearing. I think the damage to my left ear was caused by my elderly father having an unexpected tantrum and bashing something in frustration, just a few weeks ago. My right ear was protected by being so blocked, at the time, that it could hardly hear at all. That’s part of the price I pay for being a jobless loser who can’t afford to live on his own.
I’m not your typical 30yr old male (31 in a few months), I don’t really listen to music, I don’t own an MP3 player or a Stereo or any Audio CD’s. The last time I purchased a song it was on a Cassette and the year was 1987. (Pop Corn by Hot Butter, along with Humper the Camel, and Love Potion Number 9 and a few others if you were wondering.)
I guess that’s why tones like 21kHz and 22kHz are clear as a train horn to me. The toughest tones were 19 & 20. I’ll try again with some better headphones. And after I get rid of this headache, my ears are ringing with pain from those ear piercing tones >.<
Good Test And Interesting Too See The Differences Between The Ages… I’m 19, And With My Speakers Turned 100% Volume, I Could Hear Up To 20KHz, But I Couldn’t Hear The 20KHz With Headphones On.
I’m Sure Were Not All Using High End Studio Monitors And Equipment, So That Must Make A Slight Difference… Speakers, Sound Cards, Headphones, They All Have Their Own Frequency Range. And Most Probably Can’t Play Over 20KHz.
If You Can, Get Yourself Into A Professional Recording Studio, And Take This Test Again… You May Be Surprised With The Difference.
Good Test Tho, Look After Your Ears 😉
I’m 23 years old.
I can hear the 18 kHz sample pretty clearly, but not the 19k. I can “perceive” some of the higher ones but can’t recognize them as tones.
I’ve attended maybe 5 concerts total that were loud enough to cause tinnitus for many hours afterwards. I listen to music on headphones and in the car, usually at a moderate level, but occasionally I drive it up to “comfortably loud” levels (loud but well below rock-concert levels).
Most of my loud music-listening has been in the last 5 years.
I did a hearing test like this 5 years ago in a physics class. We had a speaker connected to an analog function generator. The prof. swept frequency down at a constant rate, then had students note the time on the clock when they could start hearing a tone. At that time my limit was 18.5 kHz, the same as today. Many students had limits as low as 17k. Most started hearing at 19k, a few people heard it as high as 22k.
The prof couldn’t hear bove about 13k (age 75).
I’m 49 and a musician, I also used to be a DJ in my teens. I can just hear 15khz in both ears on my naff PC speakers.
When at school we tested in a biology lesson and I could hear 22khz then !
To all you youngsters and everyone else come to that, please don’t ignore the warnings about loud volume and hearing damage, The risk is very real !
I went to a party at a night club recently and the music was ridiculously loud (I estimate AT LEAST 110dB) at one point I felt pain in my ears (130dB ?). The day after I had tinnutis and my left ear felt “full”.
When playing the piano, I found some notes sounded out of tune in places and some high notes even bent in pitch ! Got very worried, but it seems Ok now after 3 days !
I may have permanent damage and I’ve learned my lesson, I’ll be wearing ear protection if I ever go again, my hearing is precious to me and I can’t afford to lose it!
Up to 21Khz I can hear just fine, but 22Khz is silent,… if I crank the volume, I get a low hum so I’m sure that’s not it, just the amp.
It’s funny, people ask me about using hearing protection when I’m around equipment, but I don’t often use it. I worked in an industrial environment where large tires were mounted on split rims(hammering on steel noise), and I occasionally run diesel powered equipment and metal fabriction machinery.
As a youth, I used to spend a lot of time in clubs with live bands as well as travel with loud stereo music in vehicles, and more often ran loud diesel powered equipment, and I am 51 years old.
I afirm that everyone should take care of thier hearing and use suitable protection to avoid hearing loss. I am lucky to have good hearing, but from what I read and hear, very lucky to have any perception at 21Khz.
I made it to 17. i didn’t expect to get very far since i am a musician myself and is always around loud amps and feedback frequencies
I’m 20 and I can hear up to 22, which I find rather strange. I was sure that my hearing would be bad because I listen to loud music and have my headphones on a lot.
The last sound I heard was 19kHz , I am a 28 year old female.
I could hear up to 22
With the volume on my 2007 macbook pro cranked all the way up, I can feel 17 khz, not really hear it. I am 37. I tried Audacity and got the same results. It must sound incredibly unpleasant to a younger person at that volume.
I stopped hearing the TV whine a few years ago, at 15,734 kHz (USA).
Hope the stem cell scientists can fix hearing loss in a few years. That would be really nice.
Interestingly enough, a few other engineering buddies of mine hear a low tone at 18khz – which one pointedly mentioned this may be the result of aliasing caused by mp3 conversation. Mp3s get a little funky after 16khz – perhaps this would better be done with wav files, rather than mp3s?
I’m pretty keen on this stuff. I’ve been doing a similar test on myself for a few years now (using the same equipment each time). When I was 21 the highest I could hear was 21750 in my left ear, 23000 in my right. At 23 it was 21000 left, 22250 right. Now I’ve just turned 25 its 20000 left and 20500 in the right. I don’t think the comparison with this site’s test would be fair as I amplified my sounds quite a lot.
Still it’s interesting to see how it changes with time. In the last year I definitely noticed the CRT TV noise is getting harder to hear. Not such a bad thing!
For those of you who can’t hear some of the higher frequencies, make sure that your headphones/speakers/audilo card are able to actually play those frequencies properly. Some earbuds won’t even go as high as 18 so if you’re young but only hear 16 or something chances are that your audio setup is at fault.
Ergänzung:
Plaese excuse my insufficient of knowledge of the Englisch language.
This I found through a link from ORF, that link again I have found from the article “Miese MP3s gewöhnen Hörer an miese Klangqualität”, in Englisch “Miserable MP3s makes listeners accustomed to miserable sound quality”, on the german site of the newsmagazin “Der Spiegel”. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,683573,00.html (Please delete only the link, not everything if you don´t agree to external links).
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I heared Your hearingtest with headphones, not as so as other users did it with loudspeakers. I found the comment above mine very interessting, because someone who is a professional audio engineer will know more than I. But I definitlily heard with my headphones all sounds, from 8kHz until 22kHz, and that with 31 ages old.
At 54, I can hear to 14 kHz. I did something similar in engineering lab when I was 20, and could hear to 18 kHz. No one in the lab could hear above 18 kHz, so I don’t know if the speaker couldn’t go above 18 khz, or if the breadboarded signal generator quit above those frequencies, or what.
I was just involved in an investigation of a high pitched tone for a customer. This is outside my normal area of expertise, so I spent a bit of time finding and testing tools and techniques to investigate, using laptops, microphones, and various pickup coils for electromagnetic fields. I learned that any of a variety of laptops that I tried will output a pure tone up to 20 kHz and beyond. The volume drops off, but for seeing if you can hear that frequency, they still work. Most of them would output something at 24 kHz, even my el cheapo netbook. I don’t have any tools to detect that tone above 24 kHz, so I quit there. Some laptops audio inputs will sample fast enough to detect those high frequency signals, and some will not (the netbook, for one). Spectrum Lab, a freeware program from the Ham community, is a great tool for investigating this.
Oh, year, and every single tube type standard def TV I have tested emits an audible tone at 15750 Hz, which is 525 lines times 30 frames/second. Glad I can no longer hear it.
Hello All,
My name’s Matt. I am an audio engineer, male, age 25. I took this test a year ago. I was able to hear up to 17 without problem, 18 I heard some kind of subharmonic generation with an 18khz overtone. Over the course of the year, I had a drummer stomp his kick drum while I was moving a kick drum mic, and a studio owner turn up my volume knob without me noticing which led to a short burst of extremely loud sound. Both of these left a temporary ring in my ear. I’ve taken this test again, and heard the exact same results.
For those who worry about their hearing not going far past 16khz, I wouldn’t sweat it. First, if you’re listening to 128kb/sec audio encodings – like those downloaded off of iTunes, everything past 16 is getting filtered out. Second, the highest note at the top of a piano is C8, which is approximately 4khz. This means even if you are hearing no more than 16khz, you still will get the second, third, and fourth order harmonics on the highest note commonly used in musical composition. Lastly, the average person with EXCELLENT and completely in tact hearing will not hear any higher than 18khz. 16khz is still considered fully functional hearing.
For those who feel they can hear up to 22khz with the system cranked – this is most likely a false perception. Speakers generate their own harmonics. Turned up loud enough and with a signal passing through, you are just as likely to be hearing the electric components of your speaker system, which are generally broadband noise. Hearing requires not just the sensation of sound, but the identification of that sound. Close your eyes and have a friend play 19khz, 20khz, and 22khz in a random order and see if you can identify which tone is highest. It is EXTREMELY RARE for anyone except a young child with exceptional hearing to hear above 20khz.
The first thing to cause hearing loss is age. Second is prolonged exposure to high sound pressure levels. Third is congestive ailments and sinus pressure which is temporary. Whether or not ear buds cause hearing loss is yet to be determined. However, ear buds do a terrible job of reproducing frequencies except those in the 1khz area. You are much more likely to hear music enjoyably through headphones which have a larger diaphragm and can naturally produce a wider range of frequencies.
Remember, too, that your computer, your cellphone, and many other of your every-day electronics emit a high-pitch frequency that can hear (even if you’re not always aware of it) and this will affect your recognition of another high frequency.
Most of the time, I am desensitized to the noises around me, especially barely-audible, high-end frequencies, but if you pay attention to the silence, you will notice the noises that your electronic devices make. One doesn’t need a frequency response test, just turn off all your electronics and notice the silence.
I could hear 10 better than 8, and “felt” rather than heard many of the others above that. Quite a few of the tones just blended in with my tinnitus, though. My highest volume of tinnitus in my left ear must be exactly 8 – I heard NOTHING (and “felt” nothing) when I listened to that frequency. 15 and 22 were easier to hear than some of the ones in between.
I am 46.
My 15 y/o daughter could hear all of them, but the 10-16 range was so loud to her that she said it hurt when at the volume that I was “feeling.” Wonder if we loose the range as we age, or if internal interference (tinnitus) simply masks it?