Testing my hearing using audiocheck.net

There is a great website out there called audiocheck.net, and since I’ve used this before to test my hearing, I thought I’d share my test results conducted today while waiting for the Cayin N6ii to get sufficient charge for finishing my review of the AME Custom Radioso. All tests were done with the AME Custom Radioso straight out of my Dell laptop’s headphone jack set to a normal listening level without any SPL measurement (I’m usually pretty good at settling into 78-81 dB listening level with a white noise reference), so there are lots of variables that could be coming into play, but I’m not going to spend the time sussing those differences out. This is a fun post, not a science post. Maybe I’ll try the same tests on the Cayin N6ii once it charges up.

High frequency test: I couldn’t hear 22kHz at all, but I could hear every other frequency. I’m more sensitive to some frequencies than others. I hear dip at 17kHz, 21kHz is actually louder to me (could be the frequency response of the Rodioso). Otherwise, what I hear is fairly linear. According to this ultrasonic ringtone site, I hear like a dog (I could clearly hear 21.1kHz, but not 22.4kHz).

Low frequency test: I can easily hear the 10Hz tone. Maybe this is why I’m not bothered by ‘bass light’ headphones. That said, I do enjoy a good bass canon. Like with treble, I’m hearing a dip in the frequency at 100Hz, I actually hear some lower frequencies better.

Subwoofer harmonic distortion: I’m not supposed to be able to hear the bottom row. I can. I’m also not hearing harmonic distortion on the AME Custom Radioso. How do I know this? Because the speed of the tones is different on the bottom row versus the next row up and there is a climb in speed going from left to right, which is exactly what you expect when you aren’t hearing distortion overtones and you increase frequencies. This would seem to indicate again that I can hear between 10Hz and 20Hz. It also confirms that the AME Custom Radioso can go down and get it. Tones between 20Hz and 40Hz sound really good.

Spectral Flatness and Earbud Insert Test: the level adjusted sine sweep again shows that my ability to hear bass is significantly above average with the AME Custom Radioso (I’ve had similar results with other IEMs that don’t have as much bass).

Dynamic Range: the Radioso also gave me about 78dB of dynamic range in my home office.

Bass shaker: no distortion at any frequency. Has some interesting dips in response.

Blind Testing a 10 kHz Upper Hearing Limit: no problems here, 100% success after 10 tries. Switch it to 18kHz vs full range white noise and I can’t tell the difference. I’m not confident I can tell the difference between full range (20kHz?) and 15kHz white noise either. Some of the frequentist assumptions on alpha levels are wrong. You don’t need to be 95% confident to believe you can hear a difference (99% confident is just stupid, who would make a decision only if 99% confident?!), you just need a sufficient number of trials and you set your own threshold. The Bayesian perspective is where it is at.

Blind Testing a 1 dB Level Difference: I previously could do 0.5dB with certainty (a couple years ago) and could do 0.2dB with some uncertainty. I’m not anywhere near that good now. I nailed the 1dB test.

Blind testing absolute pitch: 9/10. I think I went too quickly between C4 and E4 on one doing the C-scale. I did a 9/10 on the chromatic scale too. I could tell the difference at 10c pitch up or down from 440hZ (10/10).

Lastly I did the blinded timing delay test. I managed to get down to the 1ms threshold, but not until I’d failed at it the first time and then decided to work backwards from 50ms. Looks like my ears are alright.

My Cayin N6ii is all charged up now. Back to work.