Test your hearing with Audiometry for the iPhone

I haven't used the app but the test tones are probably generated right inside the app itself since it's fairly trivial to write an app to output a sine wave at a certain frequency. Even if the tones are sampled (and looped), a 1 second, 1 frequency wave file wouldn't take up that much space, though in this case, it's probably easier to just write it in code.

The problem isn't the headphones can't reproduce the entire frequency range—though iPhone headphones won't get below 70 hz anyway without distortion—it's that most headphones color the sound, accentuating some frequencies (usually the mid voice range) and not others so you're not really getting a proper test if everything isn't flat. That's why studios (for example) pay big bucks for monitors with drivers that feature a flat frequency response across the board. The iPhone headphones probably do reproduce 20khz but they probably color the sound a little bit. Especially for a "hearing test" you're only reproducing 1 frequency so the driver(s) (depending on your headphones) don't have to work trying to reproduce more than one.

turn the volume down and save your 99c. this is false comfort.

Being partially deaf for most of my life, I can tell you that the only way to truly test for poor, or loss of, hearing is in a soundproof booth with specialist headpieces.

External noises will always skew any kind of hearing test.

That would be near impossible. I need a subwoofer to hear 20hz on my stereo. The speaker need size to generate a soundwave that size. Plus Apple headphones are crap.

The app appears to test your hearing from 20hz to 20,000hz. Funny, but the tiny speakers found in iPhones and earbuds are simply not capable of producing that range of sounds. If I can't hear them, it's not my ears, it's the speakers.

A tone at 20hz or at 20Khz will be heard by no one, as tiny speakers just can't do it.

It would be kind of like testing for color-blindness on a B&W monitor.

My iPhone headphones (both pairs I've had) sound lopsided – the right earphone doesn't sit so well in my ear as the left. Guess I have funny shaped ears? Never had the problem with the old iPod ones.... Can't see this working too well for me, though! :-)

you have to make sure that your speakers or earphones have a high enough frequency response to reproduce the test tones ;-)


BTW, you can find these kind of tests online for free.