Frequency range test
A slow sweep from the lowest note to the highest tells you two things at once: where your headphones run out, and where you do. It cannot tell you which — but it narrows it down, and the section below explains how to separate them.
Turn the volume down before you start. A sweep can get loud very quickly.
- Frequency now—
- Highest you still heard—
How to run it
Turn the volume down before you start. Then start the sweep and raise it slowly to a comfortable level while it is still in the low hundreds of hertz.
The sweep runs from 20 Hz to 20 kHz over thirty seconds, logarithmically — which is how pitch is actually heard. A linear sweep would spend its first half below 10 kHz and the rest in territory most people cannot hear at all.
Press I stopped hearing it at the point the tone disappears. That records the last frequency, which is the only number worth writing down.
Separating the equipment from your ears
The sweep measures both at once. Two ways to tell them apart:
Compare devices. Run the same sweep on your headphones and then on another pair, or on your phone. Your ears are the constant. If the two differ, the difference is equipment.
Compare ends. Equipment tends to fail at the bottom: small drivers cannot produce low frequencies at all. Hearing tends to fail at the top, and gradually. A sweep that vanishes below 80 Hz but runs cleanly to 16 kHz is describing your speakers. One that runs down to 30 Hz and stops at 13 kHz is describing you.
What is normal
| Range | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Below 60 Hz | Most laptops and earbuds produce nothing usable here |
| 60–150 Hz | Where small speakers start to distort rather than play |
| 150 Hz – 8 kHz | Everything should be clear and even; unevenness here is worth investigating |
| 8–14 kHz | Most people and most equipment are fine |
| 14–17 kHz | Where adult hearing usually stops, by age |
| Above 17 kHz | Little of it in music, and few adults hear it |
If part of the middle drops out
That is the finding that matters. The range from 150 Hz to 8 kHz carries almost everything — voices, instruments, intelligibility — and a dip in it is audible on real material as a hollow or nasal quality. On speakers, move your listening position first: a room null can remove a whole band at one spot and not at another. If it moves with you, it is the room. If it does not, it is the equipment.
Common questions
Is this a hearing test?
No, and it should not be treated as one. It measures your equipment and your ears together, in your room, at an unknown volume, through a browser. A real hearing test uses calibrated headphones in a quiet booth. What this is good for is comparison — the same sweep on two pairs of headphones tells you something real about the headphones.
I cannot hear anything above 15 kHz. Should I worry?
No. Hearing above 15 kHz declines steadily from the late teens onwards and this is completely ordinary — most adults over thirty stop somewhere between 14 and 16 kHz, and very little in music lives up there. It is one of the least useful numbers about your hearing.
Why does the bottom of the sweep sound so quiet?
Two reasons, and both are normal. Human hearing is far less sensitive at low frequencies, so equal power sounds much quieter. And most small speakers and earbuds simply cannot move enough air below about 60 Hz, so a 30 Hz tone may produce almost nothing regardless of volume.
I hear buzzing rather than a tone at the low end.
That is the speaker being asked for more than it can give, and it is a real finding. The cone hits its limit and distorts, and what you hear is the distortion rather than the tone. On a laptop it is expected below about 150 Hz. On a subwoofer it means the level is too high.
The sweep is not smooth — some frequencies are much louder.
On speakers, this is mostly the room rather than the speakers. Standing waves at particular frequencies reinforce and cancel depending on where you sit, and the effect is dramatic below 300 Hz. Move your head half a metre and the peaks move. On headphones the room is not involved, so unevenness there is the headphones or the sweep sitting near a resonance.
Why does the test start so quietly?
Because loudness perception varies enormously across the range. A level that is comfortable at 1 kHz is painful at 4 kHz, where the ear is most sensitive. Setting the sweep quiet and letting you raise it is the safe direction.