The vibrations of sound waves vary in intensity and speed or tone. Gentle vibrations make a soft sound, while fast vibrations make a loud noise.

Audiologists use objective tests like tympanometry and acoustic reflex to assess your hearing. These tests measure how well your eardrum moves and whether you have fluid behind the eardrum.

What is a hearing test?

The most common hearing tests is called pure-tone audiometry, and it requires you to wear headphones and listen to a series of tones at different pitches or frequencies. During the hearing test, the audiologist will prompt you to indicate when you hear a tone by raising your hand or pressing a button. This helps determine the softest sounds you can hear at each frequency.

Other tests may include tympanometry, which measures the movement of your eardrum (a flexible barrier that separates your outer and middle ears from your inner ear). This test can help diagnose problems such as fluid or wax buildup, holes or tears in the eardrum, or issues with the bones that connect the eardrum to the inner ear.

Other types of tests include otoacoustic emissions and auditory brainstem response. These tests measure the movement of tiny hair cells in your inner ear, which vibrates and sends signals to your brain when you hear sound. These tests can help detect hidden hearing loss when your brain can’t process sound even though your eardrum can.

Why do I need a hearing test?

If you suspect you have hearing loss, it’s essential to get a screening or full hearing test Sudbury done by an audiologist. A thorough test will determine if you have mild, moderate, or severe hearing loss and what type of hearing loss it is (conductive or sensorineural).

The test involves wearing earphones and pressing a button when you hear sounds transmitted through the earphones. To test your word recognition ability, the audiologist may also ask you to repeat words in different pitches and loudness levels.

An online hearing test can give you a general idea of whether your hearing is normal, but it doesn’t provide an audiogram or detailed results.

What is a hearing test like?

A hearing test usually involves sitting in a sound-treated room and wearing headphones or earplugs connected to a device that plays sounds of different loudness and pitches. You’re asked to raise a hand or press a button when you hear the sounds. The audiologist then plots your responses on an audiogram.

You may also have a speech test or an otoacoustic emissions (OAE) test. These tests measure a part of your inner ear called the cochlea. Tiny hair cells in the cochlea vibrate when a sound wave hits them. These vibrations create an echo that your ear can detect, and OAEs measure the health of those inner hair cells.

Other tests include bone conduction testing, which measures the bones in your ears to see how well they conduct sound, and an auditory brainstem response (ABR) test, which checks the connections or pathways between your inner ear and your brain. Your audiologist will explain these tests in detail.

What can a hearing test tell me?

A full hearing test looks at all the factors that contribute to how well you hear. It also shows if your hearing loss is caused by an ear infection or something else, like tinnitus.

The central part of a hearing test is pure-tone audiometry, which tests your ability to hear tones at different pitches and volumes in a sound-treated room. The audiogram is the graphical representation of the results. An audiologist will explain the data and how it might affect your life.

Other parts of a hearing test include speech audiometry and otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). OAEs measure the responses from your inner ear to sounds. These are generated by tiny hair cells in your middle and inner ears. Your audiologist may also use a tympanometry test that puts a probe in your ear to push air into it. This can check how your eardrum moves and the reflexes of your middle ear muscles.