This site has samples of high-pitched tones from 10,000 Hz to 25,000. Humans are supposed to have a range from about 20 to 20,000 Hz. Now you can find out how much all that crazy music you listened to as a kid damaged your eardrums!
I can hear all of the tones even on my crappy laptop speakers (I did hold my ear to them for the highest tones), which surprised me but I’m only twenty-one. It won’t be the same in ten years, probably. I remember taking those hearing tests in elementary school and being nervous because I thought that there was a tone but maybe there wasn’t? I don’t know why, it’s not like doing bad on a math test because I didn’t study.
Wow, that made my eyes water. BTW I’m 26 and could hear both sample just fine. But then I’m one of those people who can walk into a house and hear a flyback transformer.
For people who said you could hear them both, maybe you didn’t notice the sample frequencies lower down? There are several ranging from 13,000 to 25,000.
Ahh, well in that case, I can hear up to 19. But how do I know my laptop speakers can even reproduce anything higher then that? All I heard after that was some weird clicking.
OMG, I must be deaf. I heard neither of the sample tones and only up to 12,000Hz. I did rupture an eardrum once, and it’s never been the same, been to a lot of concerts with no earplugs, and have several family members who are deafer than I am. Still, doesn’t make me happy.
You need to consider the possibility that 24 kHz represents a dead spot in your speaker/heaphone frequency response curve or that you’re hearing harmonics rather than the fundamental. There are a wide range of things which will affect the accuracy of this test, most prominently the frequency response characteristics of both your amplifier and your speakers or headphones. Harmonics may also affect it, since resonances in the system will tend to emphasize some over others. I wouldn’t place too much stock in this in terms of accuracy.
I thought the 22,000 one sounded a little lower than the 21,000 one, and not high enough that I shouldn’t have been able to hear the 23,000 one (I can hear the noise a muted TV makes. What frequency is that?) My headphones are decent enough, but they’re not really meant for pure, high tones.
I can hear up to 15,000 on the laptop. Mid-40’s, little rock and roll-related ear damage, but I have perennial rhinitis. So can Ms. Shoshana, late 40’s.
I can hear the mosquito ringtone that NPR played earlier this summer, but not some of the downloadable ones. I did put a few I can’t hear on my computer so I can play them over the sound system in my classroom if anybody falls asleep during my PowerPoints.
With headphones, I could hear the 15 faintly. I couldn’t hear sample 1 at all, but I could hear it with the background noise filtered out and slowed down. I think my problem is that I can’t hear over background noise. Ah well. I’ll get myself one of these and I’ll be all right.
I could hear up to 17,000, but it was very painful. At 18,000 I couldn’t actually hear the tone, but my brain felt like someone was sticking needle in it. Same with 19,000.
I’m a relatively ancient 47. On the standalone tones, the 14K was severely painful; I could detect the standalone 15K and 16K, but the Sound Sample 1 with the ambient street noise superimposed just sounded like ambient street noise — I can’t hear pitches that high unless that’s the only thing going on, apparently. At 17K, I get absolutely nothing.
Even with the standalones, at 15K and 16K I feel them more than hear them. Like pressure in the ears when you go up in a rapidly-moving elevator and your head starts to hurt until you make your ears pop.
