Hello, my name is Matt. I record, edit, and mix music for a living. My profession requires an extremely discerning ear. This little listening test is to see if you can pick up subtle differences in pitch.
What I have below is a series of approximately 1khz sine waves, in sets of two. In each test I’d like you to try to discern which tone is sharper than the original tone. Pitch is measured in tones, and cents. A semi-tone is considered one pitch. Thus, A# is a semi-tone higher than A. A cent is a percent of a tone. So 50 Cents up from A would be half way between A and A#.
Supposedly, the smallest discernible difference in pitch is +/- 6 Cents. That’s a 1/16th of the way to the next semi tone. So, we’ll start off just by comparing a tone and a tone that is 50 Cents sharper. Then we’ll move down the ladder, to 25 Cents, 12 Cents, etc. Personally I find 12 Cents to be difficult to identify, and I’ll concede that it’s easier to hear pitch difference when two sounds are played simultaneously.
Have a listen, and if you can’t tell the difference, don’t guess – just answer “can’t decide.”
Can you Hear like an Audio Engineer?
You should also try our popular hearing test or article on Audio Sampling Rate 88.2 vs. 44.1.
4/4 on a Netbook.
I spend my weekends stood in front of 5000W Marshall stacks going mental to Rock bands!
.. Yes.. I do have tinnitus! (age 56)
As an ex audio engineer, I am pleased to report that I got 4 out of 4.
Seriously this test is not hard.
If you REALLY want to sort out the men from the boys, do a test where you have to determine between a 250ms delay between sounds and a 500ms delay. And even a 150ms delay.
THAT is the day to day stuff of audio engineers.
is it normal that I do not find a difficulty in the tests?
I just did listened it for about 4 seconds each and able to identify the differences..I should probably go to a doctor.
Yes, 4 out of 4! I might not be able to tell the difference between 128 and 320, but dammit, I’m a musician, and I would’ve been upset if I didn’t get these right!
I got 4/4! I guess I do hear like an audio engineer after all. 🙂 But the result is even more impressive because I was using my my lap top speakers, which by the way are not the best. Now I am curious if I would guessed like some of the people here, on my cell phone, since my phone is even worst from lap top speakers. :))
I listened to the first two, then answered all four correctly without listening to the second two. Not what this says, if anything, about the chances of scoring high on this test. Just sayin’.
I got all four right by listening to them. Your method wouldn’t necessarily work since there was a third option (“can’t tell”), implying a possibility that neither of the tones was sharper, and that round was a placebo test.
I got them all right, not surprising since I am a composer who works mainly with computers.
I got 50%…also listened to them on my phone..so the audio wasnt all that good ,and it took a min to load them up….f i had headphones on or listened on better speakers i could guarentee 100%
what does it mean, a sound is ‘sharp’ or one sound is ‘sharper’ then the other?
4 correct out of 4? Wow. Are you sure this are small differences? Works fine with Firefox 3.6.12 with VLC opening the files external to FF.
fun! only got em all right second time…more tests please :>
quite easy
Retitle this article
“Can you hear like a musician.”
put this link in and have everybody tell their percentages.
tonometric.com
Having forgotten my own answers I was able to find this not terribly difficult. The last two are pretty easy to identify by “feel”.
I personally thought that this was really really easy.
I got all 4 correct…but, It would be far better to have dedicated players for these test instead of having to use WMP or QT player.
Simple 🙂 4/4
None of the links work for me. Safari 4.0.3
Well, 4 out of 4, that wasn’t so hard.