Low-Frequency Hearing Test — 10–100 Hz

A low-frequency hearing test on this page plays discrete sine tones from 10 Hz to 100 Hz and records which ones you notice as tone, pressure or vibration. Everything is synthesized locally with the Web Audio API, nothing is uploaded, and small speakers will fail the bottom presets long before your ears do.

How to use it

1. Use headphones or a subwoofer, and sit somewhere quiet. A phone or laptop speaker cannot move enough air for the bottom presets, so retest on capable gear rather than trusting a silent 10 Hz chip.
2. Set the volume low and leave it alone. Low tones demand large driver excursion, so a modest fixed level protects small speakers and keeps your judgments comparable across presets.
3. Start at 10 Hz and work upward. Presets run 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80 and 100 Hz; the page opens with 40 Hz selected, and 10 Hz is the hardest preset on the list.
4. Press Play tone. Each preset is a 2 s sine with a 30 ms attack and an 80 ms release at a gain of 0.3, about -10.5 dBFS. The tone stops by itself, and Stop is always available.
5. Answer I heard it or I did not hear it, then describe what you noticed. Below roughly 40–60 Hz, heard often means felt pressure, room rattle or a moving noise floor rather than a clear pitch.
6. Log buzzing, chuffing or rattling separately. Those are signs the driver or enclosure reached its limit, not signs about your hearing, so retest on different gear if you can.
7. Keep the map for later. The last result restores from this browser only, and Clear saved result erases it. A single silent preset at 10–20 Hz is common and is not a diagnosis.

Why 10–100 Hz stresses every small speaker

A 10 Hz wave is 34.3 metres long at 20 °C (λ = 343 / f), so the physical scale of the bottom presets is wildly out of proportion to a phone speaker a few centimetres across.

Frequency	Wavelength at 20 °C	Typical reproduction
10 Hz	34.3 m	Felt as pressure on large subwoofers; most phone and laptop speakers produce nothing
20 Hz	17.2 m	The nominal bottom of the 20 Hz to 20 kHz audio band; good subwoofers and headphones reach it, small speakers do not
40 Hz	8.6 m	Chest-level feel on a subwoofer, clear pitch on capable headphones
60 Hz	5.7 m	Most speakers with a woofer or port deliver it
100 Hz	3.4 m	Within reach of decent laptop speakers, often with audible distortion at high level

Reproducing those wavelengths takes displacement: holding the same SPL while halving the frequency needs roughly four times the cone excursion, which is why subwoofers and large drivers own the bottom octaves and phone speakers avoid them. Ported boxes cheat with a Helmholtz resonance that extends the lowest octave a little, so a small ported speaker can produce more 60 Hz than its driver size suggests, and then almost nothing an octave lower. A phone’s sealed back volume is tiny, which means its diaphragm stiffens against trapped air well before 200 Hz. Room acoustics make the picture messier still below about 300 Hz, where standing waves add peaks and nulls that move when you move your seat. Headphones bypass the room, which is why a sealed pair is the cleanest way to check what a low tone sounds like without a subwoofer present.

Hearing, feeling and the equal-loudness problem

At the same digital level a 30 Hz tone sounds far quieter than a 1 kHz tone, and the gap widens as playback level drops, which is what the equal-loudness contours in ISO 226 describe.

Human sensitivity peaks between roughly 2 and 5 kHz and falls steeply below 100 Hz, so a preset can be technically audible and still feel faint or absent. Below roughly 40–60 Hz, perception leans on pressure, chest and body vibration and room rattle as much as on pitch, which is why a subwoofer makes 30 Hz feel present while headphones render it as a thin rumble. Headphones move air inside the ear canal but cannot shake your body, so a low-frequency miss on headphones and a clear presence on a subwoofer are both ordinary results. Low-frequency thresholds are also commonly affected by earwax and middle-ear conditions, which this page cannot separate from device limits; clinical audiometry starts at 125 Hz with calibrated transducers and masking, so the 10–80 Hz presets here are mostly about your playback chain and perception.

Safety and the not-a-test boundary

Keep low-frequency playback modest: sub-bass at high gain distorts small drivers, and the excursion needed at 10 Hz is far beyond what a phone or laptop can deliver cleanly.

The presets are fixed near -10.5 dBFS, but system volume and any bass boost decide the real level, so start low and keep it there. Long stretches of very low tones at high gain heat voice coils and produce mechanical noise that can be mistaken for the tone. Never raise the volume just to make 10 Hz audible; if it is not there at a modest level on capable gear, mark it not heard. This page is educational screening, not a medical device or a diagnosis, and it cannot detect or rule out hearing loss. If you are concerned about your hearing, or notice one-sided or sudden changes, see an audiologist or clinician.

Accuracy, limits and troubleshooting

The physics of small speakers dominates this test more than anything the page does.

• Levels are dBFS, not SPL. There is no calibrated acoustic measurement here; the same preset can be inaudible on one device and loud on another.
• Device class decides the result. Phones and laptops roll off steeply below about 100–200 Hz, so the 10–40 Hz chips are a speaker test first and a hearing check second.
• Bass boost and virtual bass DSP change what you hear. Many devices synthesize harmonics above the fundamental, so a 30 Hz preset can sound like 60 Hz or 90 Hz; that is processing, not the tone.
• OS and codec processing can highpass. Windows enhancements, phone speaker protection and some Bluetooth codecs cut low frequencies to protect hardware; disable enhancement modes before comparing.
• Room modes move the result. Below about 300 Hz, seat position changes level by many dB; keep one listening position or use headphones for repeatability.
• Watch how it fails. A click at the start and end is the normal envelope; a rattle through the tone is the enclosure complaining, not a hearing result.
• Infrasonic highpass filters are common. Many audio paths filter out DC and rumble below 20 Hz, so the 10 Hz preset can be attenuated even on gear that handles 20 Hz well; treat 10 Hz as a chain check first.
• What this page cannot do. It cannot measure thresholds in dB HL, test bone conduction, mask another ear, or assess middle-ear function. Clinical low-frequency testing starts at 125 Hz in a calibrated booth.

Related tools

• Online Hearing Test — Screen 125 Hz to 8 kHz per ear with a warble-tone staircase and SVG audiogram.
• High-Frequency Hearing Test — The opposite end of the spectrum, 8 kHz to 22 kHz, with device and codec limits.
• Subwoofer Test — Sweeps and discrete tones to find where your subwoofer actually delivers output.

Aliases covered on this page: low frequency hearing test, low frequency test, bass hearing test, and 20hz hearing check. Screening only — not a medical test.