online hearing test and headphone frequency response

May 1, 2007 at 2:42 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 4

Autochthon

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A comment made by a poster on another thread got me to wondering so I tracked down an online hearing test site following the instructions I aurally calibrated and tested 3 different headphones from 2 different computers and came up with varying results.

This leads me to question how much the tests are measuring your equipment and how much they measure your hearing. For instance, My Senn HD 580's could not reproduce any sound above about 14K from my laptops' output jack but could when coming from my 0404 usb (both were calibrated as best I could manage). My Sony MDR-V4 seemed to reproduce mid's and high with much more intensity than the Senn 580's but much less bass.

It certainly makes one question how useful the test is for measuring absolute hearing loss. I was able to get some idea of relative loss by comparing different headphone and testing the same headphones on different family members.

If anyone has the time I'd appreciate you popping over and testing your Ears/HP's and let me know how your impressions compare with mine.

BTW if this is even close to accurate unamped Senn HD 580's have a bad time reproducing high frequencies. But I suspect much of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of my laptops' soundcard output.
 
May 1, 2007 at 3:29 AM Post #2 of 4
Not sure how much headphone response is involved in the measurements
but the thing I did find interesting was that I have known for a while that
my hearing was dammaged on the right side but never measured. According
to the test there is a 10 db difference between 8k and 12k in my hearing,
I had a hunch of this because the soundstage is always shifted slightly left in stereo recordings. Quite a cool little program thanks for the link.
 

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