How to Test Your Hearing with Online Tones

A pair of ears can hear a wide range of frequencies, but that range is not the same for everyone. The upper limit starts high in childhood, drifts down through your twenties and thirties, and keeps falling as you get older.

You can get a rough sense of your own range at home with an online tone generator. This is not a medical test and it will not tell you whether you have hearing loss. What it does give you is a simple, repeatable snapshot of the loudest pitch you can still pick out, which is useful for choosing equipment and for tracking changes over time.

The safe way to run a hearing sweep

The single most important rule: keep the volume low. Sound that is loud enough to be uncomfortable is loud enough to cause damage. Use the lowest volume where you can clearly hear the tone, and never push the volume up to find the edge of your range.

Here is a simple sweep you can do in a few minutes.

1. Start low and go up

Begin at about 250 Hz — a low, comfortable tone you will have no trouble hearing. Slowly raise the frequency in increments of 1,000 Hz. Stop raising it once you can no longer hear the tone, then you have found your high-frequency cutoff.

2. Use a comfortable starting volume

Set the volume so the tone sits clearly above your room noise, but well below any level that feels loud. If dinner plates are clattering in the kitchen, wait — background noise will make you think your hearing stops sooner than it does. Run the test in a quiet room.

3. Test one ear at a time

Cover one ear and test the other, then swap. The two ears are often not identical, and a difference between them is more useful information than a single number for both.

4. Note the frequency where sound fades

The sounds get quieter right at your cutoff, then disappear. Somewhere between "clearly audible" and "gone" there is a threshold — that is the frequency you will remember and compare next month.

What the results usually look like

For most adults, the range looks something like this (rough, and it varies a lot by person):

• Young children — often up to 18,000–20,000 Hz.
• Teens and early twenties — typically up to around 17,000 Hz.
• Late twenties to forties — usually up to about 15,000–16,000 Hz.
• Fifties and beyond — a cutoff between 12,000 and 15,000 Hz is common.

These are general figures, not a diagnosis. Plenty of people in their sixties hear 16,000 Hz fine, and some young adults cannot go past 14,000. If the two ears differ a lot, or if one side is suddenly much worse than it used to be, that is a reason to see a professional — not a reason to keep testing.

What an online tone generator can and cannot tell you

It is a useful tool, but it has clear limits.

What it can do:

• Show the rough upper and lower frequency you can hear.
• Let you compare your left and right ear.
• Give you a baseline number to compare against later.

What it cannot do:

• Detect the causes of hearing loss (noise damage, wax, or age).
• Assess how well you understand speech, which matters just as much.
• Replace an audiogram from a clinic.

If your goal is to find a pleasant tone for tuning, meditation, or sound treatment, a tone generator is exactly right. If you are genuinely concerned about your hearing, book a real test with an audiologist.

Run your own sweep

You can start right now with our 440 Hz tone generator for a clean reference pitch, then use the online tone generator to sweep upward from there. Keep the volume low, test one ear at a time, and write down the frequency where the sound fades — that number is your own personal baseline.