Curious about the state of your hearing?

Sorry, here's that website again:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html

Neil
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I can hear everything between 1000 and 10,000 Hz! Talk about 'golden ears!'

The sound card in your computer, linearity of headphones and ambient noise all but ruin any possibility of this being a "true" test.

I ran the test and did pretty well until I got to the upper and lower limits of bandwidth. Since this is the most difficult region for iPod headphones to produce (in a linear manner), I didn't get great results.

A profession audiologist can test with equipment calibrated to offset any errors where the patients hearing is what's actually being tested.

I go to a separate doctor to test my eyes every 6 months and my hearing every year. The test on line is not in keeping with my report from my MD.

Albert, I said grab your headphones, not your ear buds! The online instructions do in fact specify cans that fully enclose your ears, along with disclaimers about quiet backgrounds and decent sound cards.

I took the test at night (Sony MDR-V6 cans) when it was quiet of course, and ran it twice -- first just to familiarize myself with it, and then to settled in and really listen. (I never feel quite "ready" at the doctor's, and they NEVER let you do it twice, God forbid!)

In any case, I found the UNSW test to be highly accurate, and right in line with the "professional" results I got a few weeks earlier. YMMV as they say.
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My iPod buds are Ultimate Ears Super.Fi pro 5:

Response bandwidth 20 - 16000 Hz
Sensitivity 119 dB/mW
Impedance 21 Ohm
Driver design Two way
Ear pads Included
Cables type Headphones cable
Headset connectivity technology Wired with sound isolation of approximately 28-30 Db when properly fitted in ear.

Note bandwidth is rated up to 16K, meaning bandwidth at or below 16K is likely compromised. Your Sony model MDR-V6 cans are rated to 30K and should deliver better results.

In my opinion, very headset has bandwidth variations that would require precision overlay correction to get accurate results.

One does need to begin with a headset with enough bandwidth to match the limit of the test tones and at least your Sony's appear to have that covered.

WHAAAT!!

How depressing. I couldn't hear the 16k hz tone. My teenagers could. They loved it and wish they could talk in that frequency so adults like me can't hear them. Worse was that I had trouble hearing the lower frequencies. How come i can hear a 40hz tone on a test CD but not the 45hz tone on that website test? Is it just a matter of decibel levels? Fascinating and depressing.

I just did this test in a completely unsuitable environment (bad PC, just using PC piezo speaker in the case with the CPU, under an enclosed desk, with heavy office a/c and a conference call going on in the background), just to see if I could hear the 16kHz tone (because i was pretty sure I couldn't). I got the 12kHz tone fine, which kind of surprised me, and at low volume, I didn't get anything out of the the 16kHz tone. But at higher volumes, it made me shiver all over - really creepy. Just to test it, I asked someone else to press back and forth between super low-volume 12kHz and 16kHz and just from the shiver I could tell it was there, but could not discern a great deal else (though it was really annoying, like I remember the flyback circuit being from my old CRT TV). Anything like that happen to anyone else?

I tried the test with some AGK headphones and I could hear 30Hz to 8khz. Nothing above that.
I listened to my old Altec Santana speakers hooked up to two SAC La Forza Mono power amps fed by a Lynx 22 audio card in my home office and there I could also hear the 30 HZ very well ( I was surprised hear that the Altecs go so low!) and even the 12khz signal. I an 58. Not bad I think !
The only thing not so nice is that I suffer tinitus, so I often have that high pitch sound acompanying me.