Our original frequency hearing test continues to receive great comments on a daily basis. After a certain number of comments, the post can get too large and cause the page to load slowly. To avoid this, new comments posted there will continue on this page . . .
You can also view the new hearing test (MP3 sound files have been replaced with WAV sound files).
I am seventeen years old and can only hear up to the 15. I don’t wear an ipod for extended periods of time and I try to avoid earbuds. I don’t go to concerts – so I find it surprising that I cannot hear past this number.
thanks to yall. I just discovered the beaty of FLAC Losless Music with Ratatat. Its like I just discovered a new music. Will protect my ears better from now on !
I tried this hearing test a few days ago. I listened to it too many times because I was trying to figure out what the sound of the higher frequency files was as I was hearing some kind of lower hum even when I couldn’t hear the actual frequency. Unfortunately, even though I couldn’t actually hear the higher frequencies I have now done some damage to my left ear, which is hopefully temporary. The danger is that even if you cannot hear the high frequencies they can still damage your hearing as high frequencies are more dangerous than lower frequencies. These high frequencies are only meant to be heard as harmonics anyway as there is no instrument or sound that is pleasing to the human ear that goes this high. I should have known better than to listen to this frequencies more than once as I have looked at the working of the human ear but I also think that sites like these should come with a warning and guidance of how to use these tests safely. The temptation is to crank your speakers up in order to hear it but the fact is that even if you cannot hear it the vibration is still happening and these higher frequencies are extremely dangerous to the ears. Also you should not try to hear any higher than one beyond the highest frequency that you can hear.
I’m 19 and just about heard the 17kHz.
I’m 31 and I heard 15 but nothing beyond that. My boyfriend, who is a musician, can’t hear ANY OF THEM. Holy crap.
Age 21, hear only up to 18khz
oh and by 22 i cant hear anything
Im 19 and the last one i heard was 18 🙁 i could hear the start of 19 but then it cuts out. This was all with full volume too, when i have it lower i can just about hear 18, so thats where it stops :(.
Im 20 years old, and I can hear Jesus thinking.
[…] Would you trade in your ear buds for an old fashioned, over-the-ears set of headphones? Think about it for a minute and then check your hearing here. […]
im 13 and i CANT hear 19 and above. is that bad?
Thanks for the tool.
I’m 23 and can’t hear 14kHz. I remember from an experiment back in physics class aged about 15 that I had unusually bad ears for my age even before I started going to gigs. Can’t remember what my cutoff was then but no doubt it’s got a lot worse.
im 35 , 36 in may
i can hear upto 16khz thru my speakers
with headphones on i can hear upto 18khz
and im a dj and producer , i get exposed to a lot of loud environments
interesting; I hear everything except 20k & 22k. Me=20
I am going to turn 21 next month, and was able to hear the 21kHz frequency distinguishably. However , the 22kHz frequency was just barely audible.
I can sense pitches really well, and generally am able to perceive most sounds(noises) around me. I don’t have an absolute pitch, eventhough I’ve been playing keyboards for over 12 years. Only sometimes, am I able to tell the right pitch by virtue of the lowest pitch I can comfortable hum. In my case it is C2.
My eyesight is weak, btw 😛
I can hear max 16kHz. I’m 21.
I’m wondering about the accuracy of these sound samples. I can hear a tone at 21 khz but even a new born baby can’t hear beyond 20 khz, or so I thought. Is it possible that sound waves create harmonics below the fundamental, not that I’ve ever seen anything written about this and I have looked a lot into harmonics. Having read some of the above comments it seems that speakers can create a lower hum when a tone is passed through but how come they only seem to do that for the higher pitches? Maybe that’s the equal loudness curve kicking in where the sound of the speakers becomes louder than the high tones.
I’m 45 and can hear to 14 khz on this test, before the sounds start becoming lower than the previous sounds and therefore unreliable, but on others I’ve heard to 15 khz. For all those people who think they can hear high up in these tests I’d advise you to check again. Listen carefully to see if the sound is higher than the previous one. If it’s not I’d suggest that you aren’t hearing the written frequency, but a lower one, some kind of sound card or speaker reaction perhaps.
It would be nice to do a test on a system that didn’t allow this speaker hum, or whatever it is, to interfere.
I am 51 yrs old heard 12, not 14
I’m seventeen and I can hear every tone, from 8 to 22 kHz!! Yeah ! But there’s something wrong… from 19 to 22 kHz the sound isn’t squeaky, the tones seemed even lower than 18 Hz… Am I right or should it be like this?? 😛
I am 13 and hear all the way up to 22 kHz, apparently this is pretty high. Because I couldn’t hear it from my mac, i played it on a specialized speaker that can play frequencies up to 33 kHz.
im 15 and i could hear up to 22. cool
i am 15 i heard all of them !!!!!!!!!!!!
I’M ALMOST 13 AND I CAN’T HEAR PAST 18!! :O
I’ll be 44 in three weeks and the last one I could hear normally was 12k. If I put my ear right next to the speaker I could barely discern the 14k one. I’m a long-time metalhead and musician. I guess it took it’s toll. I still play things a bit loud at times. Nothing like when I was younger but…….
I’m 32 and I can hear everything up through 16k over my macbook fine. Crap headphones get me through 22k, but they are all really light even cranked up full volume. 18k and 22k seem the weakest, but the others are at least there when the ambient noise is cut out a bit.
Too many trance mixes and a couple too many evenings at the club I suppose =P Could always be worse though. On the bright side, I just found out that I have perfect color vision 😉
I’m 55, a musician (aucoustic), and I could hear 8 kHz, but could only barely hear 10 kHz. Do I get the booby prize?
FWIW, I don’t have any trouble hearing conversation, TV, or any music I want to listen to, and I live in the mountains in a *very* quiet environment.
Shalom Aleikhem,
Oleander.
I could hear up to 18 however I was in the military and am in Law Enforcement now and I’ve been privy to numerous high frequency and low freqency ear drum busters so I’m sure that has something to do with it.
I’m 43 now and I can hear 18 kHz, a very faint 19 kHz, can’t hear 20kHz but -very odd- I can clearly hear 21 kHz. Is this normal?
I played with a band for some time (very loud rehearsals in a small room), I must have lost some hearing then…
Im 11 and i cant hear 15
With my volume at normal music listening levels I can hear up to eighteen but 16-18 are VERY faint. I can also (like deezey) feel more than hear 19.
But if I crank my volume 17 is way too loud to comfortably listen too and 18 is pretty average. But for some reason I still feel more than hear 19. But other than that weird thing with 19 I can hear all of them pretty well with my volume cranked to the max that I couldn’t hear with normal music listening volume.
I think i couldn’t hear beyond of 16 kh due to my headphone’s quality…
It just depends on which headphones I use. I tried with the ipod headphones and i barely heard 16kHz tone, but when I switch for sennheiser HD555 I can hear up to 22kHz.
sry for bad english
I’m 19 and I could hear until 20
I had to turn the volume all the way up on my laptop to hear beyond 15 kHZ, but they were making different note sounds so i guess I heard them. I went all the way to the last one.
16 years old. i can hear all but the 22kHz
I am a 32 year old female and i could hear up to 17…
i am a professional classical musician and i do seldom listen to other music than classical.
This kid is really stoked. I’m 56 and can just hear the 17kHz frequency.
This is scary- I’m barely 16 but the last one I can hear is 17kHz…
Time for me to ditch the headphones ya’ll
I am 21 years old and i heard each and every little annoying sound including 22..
I’m 49 and I can hear 12KHz clearly, but 14KHz not at all.
My 15 year old son can hear 17KHz clearly and 18KHz barely.
My 13 year old son can hear 18KHz clearly and 19KHz barely.
My 10 year old son … can’t stay still long enough to listen.
wow im 15 i can only hear up 2 18 lmaooo
25. I could hear up to 17 clearly, but for the others I could clearly discern the start and finish of when they were playing. I probably could have done more a few years ago, but the band directors at my college are psychos when it comes to volume, and I used to hang out in the art/music building most of the day. 🙁
I’m 57 and male, and doing the test in a quiet household using small dual-cone laptop speakers connected to a large heavy floor-standing PC with eleven fans of widely-ranging sizes in it, so it produces a fairly loud fan whoosh. My working life has been in office environments, but I spend limited periods of time in server rooms with the normal drone of fans, disk drives and airconditioning equipment.
14 kHz is loud and clear to me. I can’t hear 16 kHz, and the jury’s out on 15 kHz. If I do a comparison test between 22 kHz (which I definitely can’t hear) and 15 kHz, sometimes I feel that I detect a difference, and other times I don’t think I do. So, if there’s any hearing there at 15 kHz, it’s probably not enough to make a difference.
I’m afraid the equipment I used cut off somewhere above 12kHz. I know I hear above 16kHz.
28 years old, last ten years a lot of loud speakers smoked my ears…but still I am able to hear 20KHz and lower…21 and 22KHz sounded more like low end created inside my head…
i’m 13 and i hear up to 19kHz
Man,i’m 14 and i can ear only 18KHz.I always cared of my ears,i expected better.
And,i think the 19 to 22 tones contains somewhat pink noise or 1Khz noise or whatever. On what codec are the sounds encoded?
this is awesome
I am 35, and can’t hear anything beyond 12kHz, but I played drums for many years and also get three or four inner ear infections per year, and always have done ever since I was little.
I heared all frequencies except for 21,20 & 19khz. I am 14. Is that ok?