Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, Software, Odds and ends, Apple, iPhone, App Store
Test your hearing with Audiometry for the iPhone
I was just listening to the great Sound Opinions music podcast the other day, and they had a woman on who was campaigning against hearing damage. In fact, she actually called out iPod headphones (as I was listening to the show on my iPhone) as one of today's leading causes of hearing damage -- too many people are listening to music through those headphones way too loud.Unfortunately, the iPhone can't fix your ears (yet), but it can help you figure out if there's a problem: Audiometry is a 99 cent app that will test your hearing for you through a range of frequencies, and let you know whether your ears are blown out or whether you've still got some good vibrations left. The app plays a tone at each frequency, asks you whether or not you heard it (though you've got to be honest -- there were a few times I could hear the tone stopping and starting but not the tone itself), and then gives you a results list on how you did.
Future versions of the app will include a dB test (for loudness rather than just frequency), and the ability to save and share tests with others. It's hardly a substitute for going to a real ear doctor (if you have serious issues, you should definitely do that), but considering all the damage your iPhone may have done to your ears, the least it could do is help you figure out how much.
While you're at it, review this article from Apple on setting the maximum volume limit on an iPod.
[via textually.org]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nikax said 5:23PM on 2-04-2009
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.
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guerro said 9:21PM on 2-04-2009
Huh? What did you say?
Hawkman said 7:37PM on 2-04-2009
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! :-)
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Hawkman said 7:37PM on 2-04-2009
Yes! YES! You altered the comment form to work with Safari! THANK YOU!
Andre said 8:37PM on 2-04-2009
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.
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James said 8:58PM on 2-04-2009
Apple claims that the headphones have a range from 20Hz to 20,000Hz
http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/specs.html (under Headphones)
Andre said 9:29PM on 2-04-2009
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.
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Andre said 9:40PM on 2-04-2009
A good quality amp and speakers may produce a range from 20hz to 20Khz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_response
An iPhone and headphones does not qualify I'm afraid.
And that's if the recorded sound being played is not compressed to eliminate the low and high frequencies, such as an MP3 file usually is.
SIP said 3:50AM on 2-05-2009
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.
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m said 9:03AM on 2-05-2009
turn the volume down and save your 99c. this is false comfort.
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SpinThis! said 10:27AM on 2-05-2009
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.
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