Hearing loss is a growing issue worldwide.

To learn more about how it affects the outer and inner ear, interact with the 3D model ear.

In US data from 2005 to 2006, as many as 17% of teens aged 12 to 19 had hearing-test results that suggest noise damage. Audiomaxxer measures five listening skills through a tone check, a speech test and short practice sessions, then points you at the weakest one to practise.

Headphones required. Screening and practice, not a diagnosis.

Building the ear…

Drag to turn the ear. Press a part to open it and try what it does.

Five skills, filled in as you go

A tone check, a speech test and short practice sessions each measure different skills. Your profile fills in as you do them, and anything you haven't done yet stays marked as not measured.

Listen
Put on your headphones and answer what you hear. Some trials are silent on purpose.
Measure
After every answer the model updates its estimate and only keeps probing where it's still unsure, so the tone check stops once the estimate is steady, after 44 tones at most.
Train
Your profile picks out the weakest skill. You train that one, and the next screening checks whether it moved.

Engraving of Hughes' 1879 audiometer with a listener holding the receiver to her ear

From brass to browser

Hughes' audiometer

David Edward Hughes built one of the first instruments for measuring hearing: an induction balance that sent sounds of graded strength to a telephone receiver.

Start a screening See a sample profile

Sound strikes the eardrum A healthy eardrum seen through an otoscope , is sorted by pitch along the cochlea Diagram of the cochlea marked with the pitches each turn answers , and is pieced into words by the brain Engraving of the side of the head from Gray's Anatomy, 1860 . The screening measures what each stage leaves behind.