Audio Frequency Hearing Test

How to get a result you can trust

1. Use headphones in a quiet room. A fan or traffic noise can cover a faint tone.
2. Set the volume once. The 1,000 Hz reference tone should be clearly audible, not loud. The test tone plays at the same level.
3. Answer by ear. The frequency is hidden while the tone plays. Press the moment the beeps appear in run 1 and the moment they are gone in run 2.
4. Repeat it. Two results within a few hundred hertz of each other are a good sign. Then test the left and the right ear on their own.

The tone beeps twice a second because beeps are easier to tell apart from silence than a steady tone. The study quoted below used pulsed tones as well.

What age does to high tones

In a study published in 2021, researchers tested 162 adults aged 21 to 70 whose hearing was normal in the standard range up to 8 kHz. The table shows the share of ears that responded to a tone at each frequency.

• Under 30, every ear responded up to 16 kHz, and about half still responded at 20 kHz.
• Between 31 and 40, 64% responded at 16 kHz and 20% at 18 kHz.
• Between 61 and 70, 45% responded at 14 kHz and no ear responded at 18 kHz.

In the study, each tone was played as loud as needed to get a response, up to the limit of the audiometer. This test plays at one moderate volume, so your result at home will tend to be lower than the table suggests.

How much louder a high tone has to be with age

A second study measured 411 people aged 16 to 70 and derived a formula for how far the normal hearing threshold rises with age, compared with age 18. The table shows the result in decibels.

9 to 11.2 kHz: rise in dB = a × (age − 18)² a = 0.021, 0.024, 0.029 12.5 to 16 kHz: rise in dB = b × (age − 18)^1.5 b = 0.24, 0.32, 0.36

Example: at 40, a 16 kHz tone has to be 0.36 × 22^1.5 = 37 dB stronger than at 18 to be just audible. Very large values mean that the tone is, in practice, no longer heard: in the first study only 31% of ears aged 51 to 60 responded at 16 kHz.

What the frequencies sound like

Pitch works in ratios, not in steps of hertz: each octave doubles the frequency. That is why the slider of the tone generator moves quickly through the high numbers. From 10,000 to 20,000 Hz is a single octave, the same musical distance as from 100 to 200 Hz.

If you hear nothing, or something odd

• Small speakers: laptop and phone speakers play the lowest tones weakly or not at all. A silent 40 Hz tone usually says more about the speaker than about your ears.
• Headphones and Bluetooth: some headphones, and wireless connections that compress the sound, weaken the highest tones. If your result seems low, try wired headphones.
• Clicks, rattling or a lower pitch than expected: that is the equipment distorting. Turn the volume down a little.
• A tone in one ear only: swap the earpieces. If the silent side moves with the earpiece, it is the headphones.

What this test cannot tell you

A standard hearing test measures the quietest sound you can hear at frequencies from 125 to 8,000 Hz. That range covers speech, whose sounds lie mostly between 250 and 4,000 Hz. A browser cannot know how loud your device plays, so this page cannot measure hearing loss. The authors of the first study note that losses above 8 kHz have no apparent effect on conversation, which is why they tend to go unnoticed.

Hearing loss is common later in life: about one in three people in the United States between 65 and 74 has it. If you often have trouble following conversations, have your hearing tested by a professional.

A sudden loss of hearing in one or both ears, all at once or over a few days, is a medical emergency. See a doctor immediately.

Volume and hearing damage

Loud sound damages hearing through level and time together. The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends a limit of 85 dBA averaged over eight hours, and half the time for every 3 dBA more:

These limits are about loud sound over hours. A short test tone at a comfortable volume is far below them. The risk comes from turning the volume up to hear a tone that your ears no longer pick up.

Audio Frequency Hearing Test: Questions and Answers

• What frequencies can humans hear?
  From about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. That upper end applies to young ears. Sensitivity to high tones drops with age, and the upper limit of an average adult is closer to 15,000 to 17,000 Hz.
• What is the highest frequency I should hear at my age?
  There is no fixed number, but a study of 162 adults with normal hearing gives a picture. At 16 kHz, 100% of ears aged 21 to 30 responded, 64% at 31 to 40, 39% at 41 to 50, 31% at 51 to 60 and 16% at 61 to 70. At 12.5 kHz, 74% of the oldest group still responded.
• Why can I not hear the highest tones?
  Most often because of age: hearing fades from the top down. In the study quoted on this page, the effect of age showed at frequencies above 4 kHz. The equipment matters too. Small speakers and some headphones play the highest tones weakly or not at all, and this test uses a moderate volume. Try wired headphones before you draw a conclusion.
• Is this a real hearing test?
  No. A hearing test by a professional measures the quietest sound you can hear at frequencies from 125 to 8,000 Hz, with calibrated equipment in a quiet booth. A website cannot know how loud your device plays. This page finds the highest pitch you can hear at the volume you set.
• Do I need headphones?
  They give the better result. Headphones shut out room noise and let you test each ear on its own. Laptop and phone speakers often cannot play the lowest and the highest tones.
• Can the test tones damage my hearing?
  Not at a moderate volume. Set the volume with the 1,000 Hz reference tone and leave it there. Do not turn it up to chase a tone you cannot hear: a high tone can be loud without sounding loud to you.
• How does the test work?
  It uses two runs. A beeping tone falls from 20,000 Hz and you press a button when you first hear it, which takes up to 30 seconds. Then the tone rises and you press when it disappears. Pressing a little late makes the first number too low and the second too high, so the result is the middle of the two.

Sources

• M. Wang, Y. Ai, Y. Han, Z. Fan, P. Shi, H. Wang: Extended high-frequency audiometry in healthy adults with different age groups (Journal of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, 2021) – share of ears that responded at 8 to 20 kHz by age group (table 2), published under CC BY 4.0
• M. Jilek, D. Šuta, J. Syka: Reference hearing thresholds in an extended frequency range as a function of age (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2014) – formula for the rise of the hearing threshold with age at 9 to 16 kHz
• D. Purves and others (editors): Neuroscience, 2nd edition, section “The Audible Spectrum” (Sinauer Associates, 2001) – range of human hearing and the upper limit in adults
• Communication Health Support Association with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Audiograms and Hearing Loss Configuration – frequencies of a standard hearing test and of speech
• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders: Age-Related Hearing Loss (updated 17 March 2023) – how common hearing loss is in older adults
• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders: Sudden Deafness (updated 14 September 2018) – sudden hearing loss as a medical emergency
• CDC, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (30 January 2024) – recommended exposure limit for noise

Content checked on 1 October 2026. Found a mistake? Tell us.