Online hearing test

What is the human hearing range?

A healthy young person hears sound from roughly 20 Hz at the bottom to 20,000 Hz (20 kHz) at the top. Hz, or hertz, simply counts how many times per second a sound wave vibrates: the more vibrations, the higher the pitch. The low end — 20 to 200 Hz — is the deep rumble of bass and thunder; the middle, where most speech and music sit, runs from a few hundred Hz to a few kHz; and the top — above about 10 kHz — is the airy detail of cymbals, sibilance, and birdsong.

Almost nobody hears the full 20 Hz–20 kHz range perfectly, and that is normal. The very bottom and the very top are the first to go, and the top edge in particular narrows steadily with age. This test lets you hear where your own limits actually are.

How to use the hearing test

1. Put on headphones if you can — they give the most accurate result, especially at the high frequencies, and remove room echo.
2. Set the volume slider to a comfortable, moderate level before you start. High tones can be piercing, so do not crank it up.
3. Single tones: tap any frequency to play a steady tone. Work upward from a low pitch you can clearly hear toward the high ones, and note the highest button you can still detect.
4. Hearing age test: switch tabs, press Start, and the tone climbs slowly from 8 kHz toward 20 kHz. Press “I stopped hearing it” the moment it disappears, and we estimate a hearing age from where you stopped.

What you should hear at each frequency

Pitch rises with frequency, so each step up sounds higher and thinner:

• 125–500 Hz — low, full tones you feel as much as hear. Tiny laptop and phone speakers may reproduce these weakly or not at all; that is the speaker, not your ears.
• 1–4 kHz — the range your ear is most sensitive to, where speech lives. Almost everyone hears these clearly.
• 8–12 kHz — bright, airy highs. Most adults still hear all of these.
• 14–20 kHz — the very top. Where you stop hearing here is highly individual and usually tracks your age.

If a tone is completely silent but the one below it was clear, you have likely found the edge of your range at that frequency.

The hearing age test, explained

Our ability to hear the highest frequencies fades gradually throughout adult life — a normal process called presbycusis. Because the loss follows a fairly predictable curve, the highest pitch you can still hear gives a rough hint of your hearing age. As a guide, most people under 30 still hear up to around 16–17 kHz, by 40 the limit is often nearer 15 kHz, by 50 around 12 kHz, and it keeps dropping from there. Teenagers can sometimes hear all the way to 19–20 kHz — which is why “mosquito” ringtones above the range of most adults became a thing.

This is a fun, approximate indicator, not a medical measurement. Your headphones, your volume, background noise, and your sound card all shift the result, so treat it as a ballpark, not a diagnosis.

Why can't I hear the high frequencies?

A missing high end usually comes down to one of these, in order of likelihood:

• Your age — the most common and completely normal reason. The top of everyone's range narrows over time, fastest above 15 kHz.
• Your equipment — many laptop speakers, cheap earbuds, and Bluetooth codecs roll off the highest frequencies. Try good wired headphones before assuming it is your hearing.
• Volume too low — very high tones need a little more level to register. Nudge the slider up slightly — but never to an uncomfortable level.
• Noise exposure — loud concerts, headphones at high volume, and noisy workplaces accelerate high-frequency loss over the years.

Why can't I hear the low frequencies?

If the 125 Hz or 250 Hz tones are faint or silent, it is almost always your speakers, not your ears. Small built-in laptop and phone speakers physically cannot move enough air to produce deep bass and simply stop below roughly 150–200 Hz. Headphones and larger speakers do much better. Genuine low-frequency hearing loss exists but is far less common than the high-frequency kind.

A note on tinnitus and ear health

If you hear a constant ringing, hissing, or buzzing when no tone is playing, that may be tinnitus — and this test cannot measure it. Protect the hearing you have: keep headphone volume moderate, take breaks from loud environments, and use ear protection at concerts and around power tools. High-frequency hearing, once lost, does not come back.

This tool is for curiosity and a quick self-check only. If you are worried about your hearing — sudden loss, loss in one ear, persistent ringing, or trouble following conversations — see a doctor or an audiologist for a proper hearing test.

How this hearing test works

The test uses your browser's Web Audio API to generate clean sine-wave tones at exact frequencies, and for the age test it ramps the frequency upward on an exponential curve so your ear spends equal time on each octave. Everything runs locally in your browser — no audio is recorded, uploaded, or stored, and nothing uses your microphone.