Question: Can you test your hearing online
Can you test your hearing online? Actually, you can! Several websites (linked to below) offer free online hearing tests. However, I am deaf myself, so I am unable to evaluate the effectiveness of these online hearing tests and need your feedback to improve the usefulness of this FAQ page.
Answer: Here are just a few of the online hearing tests available. If you try them, please e-mail me a description of what the test was like, and how effective or accurate it was. If you had to go to a professional audiologist following the online hearing test results, how did the professional audiologist results compare to the online hearing test?
- DigitalRecordings.com - An About.com visitor wrote: The site gives about seven or eight hearing tests to choose from, but the last choice is best, which is the 24-tone sample. Although my left speaker doesn't work, it gives a pretty fair reading.
- Equal Loudness Contours and Audiometry - An About.com visitor recommended this site. His comments: "Here's the best one I've seen yet. It features tones from 20 Hz to 16
KHz. You click until you can barely hear the tone and it registers the level.
A word of caution: I used a set of noise-canceling headphones with a good frequency response. Inexpensive headphones or ones that do not cancel noise may make any test inaccurate.
Another word: The tones (to me) begin and end with a click -- that will make some of the uninitiated think they heard a sound. Listen for the actual tone."
Another About.com visitor wrote: "The UNSW chart of bars was helpful, you can compare your profile against a standard graph. However, it does not test whether the volume you perceive the frequencies at normal levels or not."
- FreeHearingTest.com
From an About visitor: Was unimpressed, only 5 tones, no set volume level or spl check. - WorldHearing.com - An About.com visitor wrote: Too confusing.
- Telecare Health - An About.com visitor wrote: It requires you to register with them and then sign in for the test. All free. Well thought out and accurate test.
