Your online audiometric test and audiogram printout

Welcome to myHearingTest.net! Bookmark this page and run our hearing test periodically to monitor your hearing.

This website offers you the easiest, fastest, but also one of the best hearing tests on the Internet, relying on the remote calibration procedure developed for AudioCheck.net. This calibration assures higher confidence in the test results than any other online hearing loss test.

Unlike other sites on the web, myHearingTest.net is not affiliated with any hearing aid manufacturer, and has no incentive to make you upset about your hearing ability. As a PhD engineer and professional sound designer, I always wanted to find an independent and reliable tool to assess my hearing. As I couldn't find any, I designed my own and put it online. The test originally appeared on AudioCheck.net. This improved version uses better test tones and a nicer user interface.

This online hearing test offers a convenient way to check your hearing over time, allowing you to detect a possible hearing loss or a degradation of your hearing as soon as possible, without the need to consult an audiologist for this routine check. Although this website has not been designed as a substitute for a proper hearing test, it will give you valuable information regarding your hearing when you need to:

confirm your good hearing, and take a snapshot of your audiogram for future reference
confirm if your hearing has returned back to normal after your ears were stressed, such as during an extremely loud concert
precisely track how your hearing evolves over time
confirm your suspicions about a possible hearing loss
keep track of your hearing after your visit to your audiologist or primary care physician
assess the performance of your hearing aid(s)
diagnose hearing aid deficiencies

The three next sections take you through the actual hearing test. The rest of the page will give you information about hearing loss, audiograms, and how to get the most reliable results out of this page's hearing test.

Although these test files have been carefully designed, this website is not a substitute for a proper hearing test. You are encouraged to consult an audiologist as soon as you seriously feel concerned about a possible hearing loss. Beware, some of the audio tests tones can be damaging if used improperly. You will be safe though by following the sound level calibration procedure and always starting by playing the quieter files first.

1. Calibrate your sound levels

Calibration
File

Listen to the calibration audio file, then rub your hands together in front of your nose, quickly and firmly, and try producing the same sound.

At this stage, if you have trouble hearing the sound of your hands rubbing, you can be sure that you have a severe hearing loss. You can skip the rest of this test.

Adjust your computer's volume so that both levels match. Once matched, do not change your levels anymore during the rest of the hearing test.

Although headphones are recommended for this test, be sure to take them off when listening to the reference sound made by your hands.

Clear Markers

What is an audiogram? Here are the details...

The frequencies (or pitches) that have been used during your hearing test are shown on the horizontal axis (the vertical lines). These frequencies are low on the left side of the audiogram (250Hz), then gradually climb to higher frequencies on the right side (8000 Hz or 8kHz). Humans hear frequencies from 20 Hz up to 20,000 Hz, but an audiogram only shows a subset of our hearing range: it focuses on the frequencies that are the most important for a clear understanding of speech (the spoken words).

The volume (loudness) required to reach a person's hearing threshold is shown on the vertical axis (the horizontal lines). These are expressed in deciBels Hearing Level (dBHL). dBHL are not absolute loudness levels but represent a difference between your hearing and the average "normal" hearing. When scoring 0 dBHL, your hearing exactly matches the norm; higher values are signs of hearing loss. There are tolerances though: normal hearing is defined by thresholds lower than 15 dBHL at all frequencies, not strictly at 0 dBHL. The loudness scale goes from very soft sounds on top (-5 dBHL) to loud sounds at the bottom (80 dBHL).

As you perform this hearing test, markers will be set on the audiogram, and will correspond to your personal hearing thresholds. Once the test is completed, you can read the audiogram as follows: Every sound located above the markers will be inaudible to you. The → Overlay feature gives you an idea of what these sounds could be.

A word for the Audiologist visiting this page

... from the creator of this page

I've been through a hearing incident myself and spent some time in hyperbaric oxygen therapy. One of the constant stresses I remember, was not entering the compression chamber, but the absence of any means that I could use to define what I perceived as an hearing loss, possibly exaggerated by my anxiety. This website will help people diagnosing changes in their hearing and encourage them to consult an audiologist sooner, when needed.

An online hearing test runs in a completely uncontrolled environment, and will never replace the calibrated test performed at your office. Yet, this simple test can be very informative, especially in differential testing conditions.

My goal is to build one of the better - if not the best - online hearing tests available on the Internet. Currently, the test files are based on the ISO 389-7:2005 international standard and use third octave band warble tones in order to minimize room and headphone resonance. Among the different standards in use, ISO 389-7:2005 is the one recommended by the British Society of Audiology, and does not rely on a particular type of headphones.

Please do not hesitate to contribute to this website, and share your comments, thoughts and corrections with me. If you are convinced of the usefulness of such a website and have access to a calibrated audiometer, please consider performing your hearing test, and compare your results with those provided here. By sharing your offsets with me, I will be able to improve the calibration part of this test. The more data I get, the more statistically relevant it will become.

Thank you for your precious contribution!

Dr. Ir. Stéphane Pigeon - email

Keywords: hearing, hearing loss, hearing test, audiometry, audiometric test, audiogram, audiometer, audiologist, hearing levels, hearing thresholds, pure tone audiometry, warble tones.

2. Listen to the individual test files

In a silent environment, play back the individual hearing test files, column by column, starting from the top left corner file: move down until a tone becomes (barely) audible, then switch to the next column.

↓	Almost silent


Quiet




Louder




VERY LOUD

Once you have navigated through all the columns, your audiogram is complete.

Always start with the top files. The bottom files are for severe hearing loss, and will play very loudly for a normal hearing person!

Stop with the file whose tone becomes just audible - not the file above or below - then switch to the next column.

3. Review your personal audiogram

Your personal hearing thresholds should now appear on the audiogram alongside. This graph is similar to what your audiologist's system would produce during a hearing test, and plots the softest sounds you can hear across the different frequencies tested.

Ideally, the six markers should be located on the top of the graph, around the zero range. The next section explains the audiogram in detail.

→ Review, Print, Save or Bookmark your Audiogram Here

Adorn your audiogram...

Click this → Overlay link to superimpose additional information on to your audiogram.

The first overlay outlines the area related to conversational speech. It is in the shape of a banana shape and is often referred to as the “speech banana.” Vowels are located on the left side of the banana (the green area), and consonants are to the right (the blue area). Remember, all the sounds located above your individual hearing thresholds will be inaudible to you. If your personal markers are located inside (or worse, below) the speech banana, it means that your hearing will be missing part of the conversation, requiring your brain to compensate for this deficiency, by guessing words, for example.

The second overlay depicts some familiar sounds of our everyday life, such as rustling leaves, birds chirping, water dipping and other common sounds.

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How to efficiently use this site!

Technically, we are facing two situations: either the hearing test you perform is (somehow) calibrated, or it isn't (at all). In both cases, useful information can be obtained from this site, although of a different nature.

The calibrated condition assumes that you are using good headphones or speakers - their response must be flat across the tested frequency range (250-8000 Hz) - and you succeeded in calibrating your sound levels properly. In such a case, the precision of this hearing test is estimated at around 10 dBHL, which is good enough to diagnose a mild, moderate or severe hearing loss: simply, look at your threshold plots on the audiogram and give them a 10 dBHL tolerance.

The uncalibrated condition can be understood though the worst-case scenario: your headphones or speakers are poor performers, and you did not bother calibrating your levels as suggested in our first step. In such a situation, you won't be able to infer any information about your actual hearing loss, but you will still be able to use this website in a very reliable way through differential testing.

All it takes it is to run the hearing test once to acquire a reference: note your computer level settings precisely, and remember how your audiogram looks (or better, bookmark → this page). By using these exact settings the next time you come back, any change in your audiogram will result from a change in your hearing. Even if the test was uncalibrated in the beginning, using the same computer settings and audio equipment from one test to the other, ensures that the changes you observe will be relevant to your hearing.

Differential testing can be useful in many situations:

keep track of your hearing, and feel reassured if it remains stable over time
confirm your hearing hasn't changed since your last visit to your audiologist
confirm your hearing aids keep working properly over time

Differential testing also encourages you to call your audiologist for an appointment, when your audiogram shows significant changes.

Differential testing requires that you run the hearing test at least once in order to acquire a reference. Do it now, and print (or bookmark) your results for future reference. This → special printable page has been designed for such a purpose.