Hearing test

[TimberWolf]

2 kHz me, but then I can hear the elephants squawking 30 miles away in London Zoo

You mean 20 kHz?

Interestingly elephants communicate using ultra low frequencies (15–35 Hz, 117 dB) like their blue whale (10 - 40 Hz, 188 dB) cousins. I imagine if we cracked elephant communication, we might be able to crack whale song too.

[hyperD]

12 kHz... I'm a deaf old ****er having played in loud bands for too long... I hope it is the headphones, that does appear to be quite worrying!

[BlasterBates]

12 kHz... I'm a deaf old ****er having played in loud bands for too long... I hope it is the headphones, that does appear to be quite worrying!

naah 12 KHz is still normal depends how old you are. At 20 top frequency is about 18 and then you lose 2 KHz per decade. I mean you might be just under 14 KHz. It drops fastest in your 40's. So the 30 somethings will hear really well, and the 40 somethings will be as deaf as a door post.

Human speech goes up to 8KHz, so assuming you can hear 13 KHz it will take about 30 years for you to have a slight hearing impediment, and most 70 year olds have one.

[Churchill]

I'm a bloke, therefore I have selective deafness.

[thunderlizard]

I can get up to 15kHz. Funny how it drops off as you get older. My grandad thought Wuthering Heights was an instrumental.

[HairyArsedBloke]

At nearly 51 I can easily hear 14K but nothing at 15K. The higher ones have some harmonics that I can pick up. Maybe that is the result of a dodgy sound card.

I wish I could get rid of the loud tinnitus that I suffer from.

[NickFitz]

Tried with both my iPhone earphones and an older pair from a portable CD player: with both of them up to 12KHz was fine, 14KHz was very faint, and nothing beyond that. The iPhone ones are specced to go up to 20KHz, so I assume the problem lies somewhere between the speakers

[TimberWolf]

I think I might score higher if my sound card or speakers had a little more oompf. This one allows you to set the loudness, but only goes up to 16 kHz. I can't hear much at any frequency below about half volume.

So I thought I'd give my old PC (and its sound card) a go yesterday, but it seems that since I last used Windows on it (I ended up using Linux on it in the end, but most of my hardware never worked, including the sound card) the sound doesn't work any more.

[BlasterBates]

It depends on how loud. A youngster can hear all these frequencies at low volume, but as you get older, if you turn it up loud you might hear it, if you put the headphones on you're much more likely to hear it. Some sound cards produce lower harmonics at the high frequencies, so if you're hearing 20KHz it may well be the sound card.

For hearing tests they only go up to 8KHz, 20 DB for everything up to 8KHz is normal hearing.

For anyone over 40, a high frequency test like this doesn't really mean anything if you can hear OK in the normal range, for a youngster it might be a sign of problems in the future.

[TimberWolf]

I think my headphones are ****ed now. They are making that vibrating noise at normal sound levels that you usually only hear when speakers are at full volume.