How old are your ears?

[davym]

I came across this test today, I can hear the first two tones then just clicking noises. I am 43 but appear to have the hearing of a 50+.

Strange cos SWIMBO says I have hearing like a bat

How Old Are Your Ears? Test Your Hearing (VIDEO)

Maybe we are wasting our time chasing high frequency reproduction which we simply can not hear

 

[Charles Darwin]

Strangely enough on this test I can't hear anything above 12k yet I can quite easily hear my supertweeter which is crossed in at 15kHz (24dB L-R so at that point it is already down by 6dB).
On other tests which do not involve embedded internet videos I can hear perfectly well to 18kHz.

I have to assume that this test is faulty.

 

[Mooly]

Try this one,
Equal loudness contours and audiometry - Test your own hearing

Any "testing" like this is rough and ready at best. You need proper equipment/headphones etc and the levels used are vitally important. Its no good saying you can "hear" say 16 kHz if you are feeding half a killowatt into the headphones.

Its no use listening on PC speakers, you need to concentrate with high quality phones, but watch the levels

 

[Mooly]

On a 7 year old laptop this is what I heard on the inbuilt speakers when following the instructions. The level I chose at 1kHz was what I would call "low". Threshold (in an average room without straining to hear) on this system was around -60 db on the chart. 16kHz was detectable but essentially inaudible. The speakers produced nothing below a few hundred Hz so ignore those.

 

[davym]

I'll need to try that one out later when things quieten down but I did suspect that first test, I know my hearing isn't that bad lol

 

[AdamThorne]

I wonder, does the highest sine wave you can hear correlate to the HF extension you can hear in music?

Maybe you can hear a 17 khz tone, but could you hear a 14 khz low-pass on music?

On the other hand, I've heard that you can detect high speed transients in lower frequency tones when your sine response says you shouldn't be able to. Saw some research on that somewhere, sorry I don't recall where. If true, in some cases you might be able to detect a low pass in place at actually a higher frequency than your sine response would predict.

Just some thoughts... someone with some gumption should put together an experiment!

 

[adason]

remember, with all these tests you are not only testing your ears, but your headphones, soundcard, headphone amplifier too...all those things combined

 

[davym]

I did this test, cant hear 16k at all but 12 is clear enough. I can hear right down to 30hz however I have to ramp the volume up to -6db from -36 at 1khz. Im using my Grados and 2 chip Cmoy amp because it's late.

I cant seem to paste the XPS file pic of my graph which is a shame.

It seems to me that a graphic equaliser could be a very good thing, if only one could be made which didn't ruin the sound.