Tone generator
One clean frequency at a time, anywhere from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
⚠️ Turn your volume down before starting. Sustained pure tones can damage hearing at levels that feel comfortable.
Midrange — speech lives here, and so does most music
How to use the tone generator
Two very different questions get answered by the same tool. Sweep the low end and you find out where your speakers give up — most laptop and phone speakers produce nothing usable below about 150 Hz, no matter what the specification claims. Sweep the top end and you are testing yourself instead: hearing above 15 kHz fades with age, and the frequency where a tone disappears for you is a rough guide to that. The slider is logarithmic, because that is how hearing works — an octave takes the same distance whether you are at 100 Hz or 10 kHz.
- 1Turn your volume down before you press play — low frequencies feel much quieter than they are.
- 2Press play, then drag the slider slowly through the range.
- 3For speakers, sweep downwards and note where the sound stops being audible.
- 4For hearing, sweep upwards from 10 kHz and note where the tone disappears.
FAQ
I hear nothing below 100 Hz.
That is normal on laptop and phone speakers, which are physically too small to move enough air. Try headphones — you should feel as much as hear those frequencies.
The tone disappears around 15 kHz. Is my hearing damaged?
Not necessarily. The upper limit drops steadily with age for everyone: around 17 to 18 kHz is typical in your twenties, and closer to 12 kHz by fifty. Browser and hardware limits also affect the result, so treat this as indicative rather than a hearing test.
Why is the volume capped?
A pure sustained tone is far more damaging to hearing than music at the same perceived loudness, and there is no reason for this tool to go loud. The output is deliberately limited.
What are the different waveforms for?
Sine is a single pure frequency and the right choice for testing. Square, triangle and sawtooth add harmonics above the fundamental, which is useful for hearing distortion or for sound design, but they are not a clean measurement.