What age are your ears? Online hearing test measures your hearing loss

Fellow tinnitus sufferer here…

Age: 39
Left: 43
Right: 47

One thing which I think can help not damaging hearing is to avoid headphones as much as possible. For casual jams where I don’t want to disturb others I switched from headphones to using a small JBL Go speaker, it is pretty ok for composing, even at low volume you can still hear enough bass to get stuff done, although obviously not suitable for critical monitoring and mixing duties. Probably an obvious tip, but your ears will thank you if you use headphones a lot for this kind of thing.

Interesting, I am 24 years old and my hearing started going crazy since 3 years ago kinda. Lots of times I don’t hear what people are speaking to me even if they are a meter away, or I just hear noticeably differently to my left or right ear.

According to this test my ears are both of a 14 year old. Is the future really that grim?

Left: 30 yo :partying_face: :tada:
Right: 48 yo :dizzy_face: :hear_with_hearing_aid:
Turned 43 yesterday.

I have always thought my left ear was the one with problems… Especially because it’s the one that I choose instinctively when using the phone, and that sometimes has tinnitus…
Weird.

Been doing that intuitively for a couple years now, to not worsen the tinnitus i already have. Also almost not listening to music for fun, while traveling etc (listening to many podcasts though…). I can really tell the strain on my ears building up quickly with headphones. Supposedly closed back are worse than open in this respect.

1 Like

Just turn it down a bit? Headphones by design aren’t any more dangerous to your ears than anything else that makes sound as long as the decibel level is low enough.

Also noise canceling headphones help as you don’t have to put the music up as loud with them.

1 Like

Yeah keep it pretty low and not extended periods, in ear and closed back are the worst.

The free Mimi Hearing Test App might be a useful deeper dive into this as a thing. Its a bit clunky and takes a few minutes to complete. But with a set of headphones or AirPods that it is calibrated with, it provides insight into hearing across multiple frequencies. The Youtube test showed me with 53L 60R for my 52 year old ears. The Mimi app basically placed me as bang average across both ears for my age, which was slightly more reassuring…

I use headphones almost exclusively (better for those around me in the house and neighbors, plus I enjoy them more than speakers because no room acoustics to deal with). I would like to turn them down to a “safe” level but as far as I know there isn’t an accurate way to measure decibels of headphone output. Though I can probably guess what is too loud. And also there seems to be this volume creep that happens where I start nudging up the volume over time because, well, it sounds good. I do feel though that my hearing has become worse since I started using them.

It’s not very accurate but I use a cheap decibel meter to check how loud my headphones are. For longer mixing sessions I try to stay between 50-60db. Almost never higher than 80db. Though like you said, you can probably guess yourself what is too loud for you :wink:

15Khz in the left, 14Khz in the right. Not horrible for 44 I suppose.

Could hear aliasing (or at least I believe that’s what it was) before I could hear the tones though so not sure about the validity of that test.

impressive. 23 and i am 24.
cant stress the importance of earplugs enough though. I work at an earplug manufacturer so I’m biased but awareness across the globe really differs.

22, 22, 27. I’m 49

If it could measure how well I can hear a conversation in a loud venue though, it would probably be more like 70

bang on my age 38

Left 36 and Right 29. Makes sense my monitoring ear for DJing was normally left. Back when we used to have parties anyway :sweat_smile:

I’m OLD…but my ears checked in at 23L and 26R

I have never and will never use in ear headphones. And i use open air cans. And I have cans on for long periods of time. Perhaps that’s is why my ears continue to be young.

My ears are 25 years older than I am by this standard, but an audiogram from hearingtest.online shows the rest of my frequency range (aside from the highest freqs) is pretty good so I’m not complaining. Just have to watch the highs in the mix I guess.

I tried the test on the video, the https://onlinetonegenerator.com and then with Ableton and Operator (RME802 set to 96Khz Sample Rate). Results were very different, I got 2000 Hz more with the Ableton sine wave. Volume was rather low but I don´t want to try higher volumes just to get a higher result. I wonder what a professional person would say about calibration of the equipment. Still very interesting!

1 Like

a SLYentist!

damn
right ear was 49
left ear was 67
im 41.

Im among the folks here who have inner ear problems/bullshit.
at one point i had a diagnosis from an Ear Nose and Throat doctor of Meniers disease, but never got the chance to follow through with treatment as i lost my insurance through work.
it was really disabling for about a year or two. id get vertigo so bad i couldnt move or else vomit all over the place and feel like i was falling up into the sky or through the floor or just stuck on some horrible carnival ride with the room flying around everytime i turned my head.
luckily that all went away (knocks wood), but it ravaged my hearing in my left ear.
total drag.
im sure that years of unprotected ears while playing loud drums didnt help but it sure wasnt the only culprit.
getting older is strange.

1 Like