simple Hearing test

Hearing demands several parts of our body to work properly, however you may not need to find the source of the hearing problem so as to solve it. Hearing aid devices manage to solve the vast majority of cases just by having proper calibration.

This video in youtube may explain further about your hearing.

Now, call your friends, family and neighbours ! Then we can begin this test, because I must WARN you now that This test I provide is mostly and solely for FUN. You mustn't draw any clinical conclusions out of it! If you're hearing impaired, I suggest you visit your doctor and ask him further assistance. Now let us have Fun!

Hearing aids have two fundamental parts: microphone and speaker. Sometimes these are referred by other names so as to be more sophisticated or accurate to the technology they're implemented. The concept is: microphone works as an artificial ear and "reads" sound information, then "parts" of this very sound are amplified (incremented, enhanced) and outputed through the speaker that is closely placed to the person's Ear. These speakers are very similar to the ones you find in televisions to output sound. Medical speakers are usually more expensive due to their much higher realiability. Why ? Suppose you work in a factory and you can't hear an alarm - you can cause much trouble to you and colleagues. If your television breakes, you may miss your favorite tv programme, however a hearing aid can prevent you from working, taking care of family memebers, etc.

Disclaimer

How do we know which part of the sound to amplify, increase ? And which portion to leave as it is ?

We may perform an Audiometry in a clinic or hospital alongside a Professional that could be an especialized physician such as a Otolaryngologist or a speech therapist. You'll hear an unusual sound that may resemble a beep or a whistle - It's a TONE.

Tone is a single frequency pitch, an isolated portion of the sound. When we put frequencies together, we have Sound - all sound we hear: cars, birds, music, etc. But so as to understand our hearing shortfalls we test one isolated frequency at a time. If you've seen the previous Youtube video, you remember that each isolated frequency estimulates one portion of the Cochlea (the snail like structure). The upmost part, the minimal radius one in the spiral, is activated by the lowest frequencies we hear. If we start going down following the spiral or snail we get to nervs activated by each time higher frequencies. The bottom or last portion of the spiral is activated by the highest frequencies we hear.

Fine! Now, where do we start ?

As soon you change the frequency number in Hz (or click "On") a beep, tone should be outputted. If you can't hear anything, check your speakers or try to play any sound from a file or youtube video you know that works. If it doesn't play, your device may be misconfigured, otherwise change your browser (or open this page in another computer).

Begin with low frequencies such as 100Hz or 200Hz and go up until 10 000Hz. You should skip many close frequencies as they may behave alike. You could do 100, 220, 340, 680, 1100, 2800, 4600 for instance.

For each frequency lower the volume until you barely hear the beep and then write it down. You may write 200Hz vol 2% ; 360Hz vol 0.06%; etc.

Tip: turn on and off the Tone to ensure you're hearing the beep, not a random dog or car in the street.

Then without changing your system device volume - just use this page Volume % percentage ( you must only use One single volume adjust) call your friend, neighbour or family member and perform the very same test. This sould be done immmediately after you finish yours or you may from one day to another change your system device volume. The result cannot be used to identify properly any impairment, however It can undoubtly tell that one person hears better a determined frequency than another. Perhaps both are healthy and their hearing differencies are normal or both can be Impaired and demand a hearing aid device.

Here you can test different hearing among people (your friends, family and you) not Absolute hearing biased in the Human Kind. The equipment Professionals use is heavily calibrated and can tell what you hear (and what you don't) compared to entire human kind. Even though, the sounds are the same - a single tone, a few words, etc.

Suggestions

I made this page when I knew my grandmother suffered hearing impairment, not bad, very normal to be true, as she's 85 years old. She went to a few doctors and speech therapists, but sitll I wanted to have some fun and try to mimic their tests. So as to guarantee my speakers worked properly and could recreate every frequency I wanted, I used a Home Theather device as Speaker. My model was a Sony Muteki 7.2 Surround system. Any speaker could do fine, but the fancier, the better. Very low frequencies, more or less below 50Hz, and very high frequencies, I would say above 12k Hz may not be heard but not due to your Ear limitation but due to the low quality of your speaker. No need to be ashamed, you may never use those freq's unless you start playing with this page for long or have a unique taste for symphony orchestra.

Troubleshoot

This must work in all modern web browsers, no matter what. It should run in mobiles, computers, tablets, televisions, video games and is independet of make, such as Sony, Samsumg, Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo and system, like Windows, Linux, Android whatever.

Technical stuff

I used Web Audio API to produce a sine wave of the desired frequency. It's a recent HTML5 implementation, it's called "Oscillator". Most certainly, this code may have to be updated frequently as the Stardard of Web Audio goes from Draft to God knows what. I did this in two days (yes, I code slowly) on August, 24th 2015.

The javascript code is licensed under MIT license(c), so please use it as you wish but give credit to the author of this part of the code. I'd feel delighted to receive email's about you telling me how and where the code is being used, just as a favour - no legal demand or issue. Send to ruru dot marcelo At gm@il.com

Thanks and Sources

I must thank Opera Developers for the great article about WebAudio API by Chris Lowis. Marvellous!