Unscientific hearing test: how good is your hearing?

barely 18k

17k

I used to hear that very high TV sound the TV always makes.

18k but it may be b/c of the frequency response of my speakers

17k. pretty sure i used to be able to go higher

In the comments: yes, computer speakers often have a high frequency response of less that 22 Khz, but that just means that the volume is reduced by some amount at these frequencies. It still plays them, it might just be down by 3-6dB or so. You can test this by putting a mic in front of your computer speakers & recording the 22kHz tone… you’ll still see a tone that is definitely loud enough to hear (provided of course that your ears aren’t as dead as mine!)

12 kHz. Tinnitus drowns out anything higher than that. :(

cuts out at 16 :(

12

If you can hear the little "ptt" at the beginning of the tone but not really the tone does that count?

voted 15, but after adjusting the volume I can hear 17

If you can hear the little "ptt" at the beginning of the tone but not really the tone does that count?

no, what you are hearing is a an impulse sound and not the frequency itself.

if i put my ears 1 cm from the speaker - does that count?

how high does the volume of the speakers should be?

Can juuuuuust hear 16k on my computer speakers. Have been playing in bands for 21 years without using earplugs, so.

maximum volume+attach me ears to the speakers - i can hear them all

16k, and I'm so young :(

tried this on my regular speakers and got to 18. computer speakers not optimal.

high volume + headphones = all of 'em

If I crank my speakers up loud, I can just hear 14 kHz.

16

19

but w/ shitty laptop speakers like everyone else

12 kHz. Tinnitus drowns out anything higher than that. :(

I'll dispute that. I have mad crazy tinnitus, and 17k was my upper limit for hearing something. Tinnitus, as I understand it, is not actually hearing loss, it's more like phantom hearing. It seems to be more neurological than physiological. But we don't really know for sure.

There is, though, a MAJOR flaw in this test, in that it depends on your speakers or earphones.

I feel depressed now - how bad will my hearing be at 30? 40?

need to stop playing loud music on headphones

standing next to speakers at punk shows finally took its toll I guess

how bad will my hearing be at 30? 40?

Better question: how much better will your sound equipment be?

just stop listening to music for a few years and wait for your hearing to grow back

it needs to grow. use some miracle grow

Sadly, that doesn't happen either.

I have pretty good sound equipment kenan - it's kind of embarrassing tbh

An embarrassment of richness of audio?

the problem is my music sounds so good that I never don't not want to be listening, so yes, an embarrassment of richness

so good it hertz

I wish hearing grew back :/

so good it hertz

Perfect. Thank you for that.

There are a lot of ways to lose your hearing, and we honestly don't fully understand the interplay between brain and ear quite enough to say, "Never listen to loud music!" because people are different. Getting older is obvious, because the loss of bone will lead to to the loss of the tiny, tiny bones in your ear as well. Loud sounds can damage your hearing, but sometimes it comes back quickly, and sometimes never at all. Tinnitus is the weirdest thing of all. It's correlated with hearing loss, but not at all linked causally. We have no idea what's going on there, really.

fuck was it perfect, should of course have been 'hertz so good' but what can you do eh

No need to remind everyone of early Mellencamp.

14 thru laptop speaker, 16 thru headphones

latterday bryan adams, more's the shame

I feel worse for people who remember Bryan Adams songs than people with slight-to-moderate hearing loss, tbh.

real low point for mel c imo

Jesus 12 is the highest I can hear, even in headphones. I knew my hearing was screwy.

Or your headphones might be crappy. So take heart!

Nah, I have very bad hearing :( I'm soemthing like maybe 50% deaf in one ear? I need to get it checked out properly mind you.

high frequencies are for losers anyway, voices/normal sounds occur in the midrange tbh

And fucking AWESOME sounds are in the low range. No matter what Geir says.

poll chipmunks vs johnny cash

As long as I can hear in the mid range, and also hear and feel the kind of bass that makes tendon not so affectionate toward bone anymore, I'll be a happy guy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

huh, i was reading through this thinking i'd done it before, not noticing the posting date.

17k, with the volume up. i feel i can hear the tiniest bit of not-silence in 18k, but... no.

10. Not surprised. I continue to morph into my father.

21K. Tone sounds lower than the 16-18k ones. the click of the sound file playing I can hear for all of them.

Ive spent the last decade obsessing over having earplugs in at every show ever, or if not, wet toilet paper.

19K

14K wtf?

I'm saying 20K, the last two seem silent to me.

I tried the 8K one, damn near deafened me!

15 through ipod headphones. interested to try with other better headphones/speakers although tiny earphone speakers shouldn't have a problem with high freqs, right?

also ;_;

15k and i had to crank it. 16k there is absolutely nothing

my constant ambient hum is at about 14k, i now know *thumbs up*

i can still remember the show where i woke up the next morning and knew i had really fucked something up. thanks trans am!

oh god yeah that happened to me a couple of years ago, scared the shit out of me. felt like I was underwater all day :(

I can hear 16, but 17 is nothing.

16, that's okay, half way.

17 and an idea of 18 but i voted 17
this makes me feel kind of better about not keeping my earplugs in for all of acid mothers temple a couple of months ago and having my ears ring for a day and a half afterwards

also if you have cats, play this for them! my cat seemed to want to get inside my speakers or at least attack them at 22kHz

seriously though, Etymotic earplugs 4 lyfe

17, but i turned the volume up to do it

whoohoo, still 18 a year later. dog is really pissed at me right now though

15k in one ear, 17k in the other. Gonna try this again when I am not congested

But I have suspicions it is accurate

17k, my bat senses are fucked

i thought i imagined 2010

You know what the oddest thing is, that certain frequencies seem to have gone, and others haven't?

I can't hear 14k on the scale going up - but at 19k and 21k I can hear again. Or I don't know if hear is the right word, but I can definitely tell, in my right ear, that there is sound. Which is odd, because my right ear is by far the deafer of the two. So I wonder if I've just killed one part of the frequency range worse than others, or if my deafer ear can someone feel sound that I can't technically hear?

I can hear the 15kHz tone clearly. 16 and 17 I had to turn right up to hear a faint noise barely any higher pitched than 15. 18: nothing. RIP my hearing.

I remember talking to a friend who makes techno who said that all his favourite electronic musicians had suddenly gone crap in their 30s and he blamed the loss of high frequencies. Being a few years older than him, I wanted it to be rubbish then and I want it to be even more so now.

I notice a real difference in frequency response if I swap ears when I'm on the phone, but it doesn't seem to make much difference for these. 17 is faintly there in both (a little louder in the right) but 18 is gone in both.

Oh shit! 12 kHz was the highest I could definitely tell I was hearing something.

17kHz. I will start to feel old when I can no longer hearThe Mosquito (17.4 kHz), but I'm afraid it won't be long now.

actually I can barely make out the 18 khz tone, and I can definitely make it out here. I'm really just posting this for my future reference.

shit, I can hear a faint, squealing something all the way up to 22 khz (though 22 might be a bit of a stretch), but it's hard to separate the tone from interference + my imagination + the ringing in my ears from hearing lower tones.

so, 18 for sure, 19-22 inconclusive but damn my ears hurt.

*cochlear nerve melts*

Can't hear 17, 18, 19 & 20 at all (even with volume all the way up), but can hear 21 and 22.
Does that make any sense?

Yes. Hearing loss can occur at specific frequencies, with both higher and lower frequencies intact.

I have so-called 'disco-ears' for sure.
Can't hear a thing people say in a crowded room.
I suppose these are the frequencies that do me in.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I have problems hearing things people say in crowded rooms, too, but I've always figured that it was auditory processing disorder.

Disco ears!

auditory processing disorder

Different roads may lead to Rome, in this case.
With me it is definitely a matter of damage done during my high volume teenage metal head years.

I can hear up to 20, but I am wearing noise-cancelling earphones, and without them I doubt I could hear past about 16, the last couple were barely audible.

with these headphones I can hear up to 21

whoa with headphones in i can hear up to 21 too!

"Disco ears" is a good phrase but "hearing things people say in crowded rooms" already has a pretty good name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect

(I am terrible at that too - if there's another conversation happening in the office I'll miss half of what the person talking to me says)

Barely 15. 320kbs MP3s are probably good enough for me.

With headphones and the volume up and the air conditioning off, I can hear something on all of them. 18 and 19 are just a faint hiss (maybe compression artifacts?) but the top frequencies are actual tones. I was worried there for a while!

I had an audiogram a few years ago and I was pretty flat out to about 14kHz, beyond which it dropped rapidly. They weren't testing absolute upper limit though, but amplitude profile. The audiologist bloody loved me. Just ran my own tests generating sine waves in Audacity and I can't perceive anything beyond about 15k now (and it certainly drops beyond 11-12k). Could be the soundcard or the headphones - maybe I'll burn some tones to disc in quasi-random order and listen on the Grados at some point...

I wouldn't worry too much about progressive loss in the mid-high teens - comes to us all (I'm 43 so my days of hearing 18k are over, I'm sure), it's down in the 2k-6k range where hearing loss is most destructive. Plenty of sound guys and musicians are fine out to the mid-teens but completely stuffed down there, like 20 or 30dB down from ideal.

As for MP3s - well, they rely on masking at high frequencies, so even if you're a young'un and can hear a full-scale 19kHz sine wave clear as day, doesn't mean you'd be able to perceive the lack of those frequencies in a psychoacoustically-processed lossy file of actual, busy, full-spectrum music.

14. I'm hoping it's just both these sets of headphones :/

i can hear 21 very faintly but not 22. i had to crank the volume up on my headphones to hear it though.

although 17 is the last one that sounds as loud as the others. idk

Same for me. Can hear up to 21, gets gradually quieter after 17.

on my headset I could hear up to 21

20 through MBP speakers. Fascinating how 20 is clear and completely noticeable and 21 is nada, not even a hope of straining, pretending to hear.

21 if I put my ear very close to a speaker but no 22 even then

I hear the slightest strain in 21 but it's so small that im going with 20. But hearing those notes feels so uncomfortable,