EQ ear trainer

One band of an equaliser is boosted or cut. Switch between the EQ and the flat sound, then name the frequency. Levels go from 12 dB boosts on four bands to third-octave bands and cuts.

Turn your volume down before you press Start, especially on headphones. The trainer starts quiet and keeps the EQ and flat versions equally loud; your device’s volume is up to you.

Level 1 +12 dB · 4 bands Level 2 +9 dB · 8 bands Level 3 +6 dB · 1/3 oct Level 4 −12 dB · 8 bands Practice your settings

Score: 0
Streak: 0
Best: 0

Space switches

Source Pink noise Drum loop Band loop

Volume −21 dB

Which band is boosted by 12 dB?

Turn your device volume down, press Start, then switch between EQ on and Flat and pick the band that changed.

Last 10: pass with 8 correct

Your bands

Every answer on every level, grouped by the band that was actually changed. Kept in this browser only.

Band	Asked	Right	Accuracy	Most often mistaken for	Misses lean
No answers yet. Scores appear here as you play.

Space or B: switch EQ on / flat
1–9, 0: answer (0 is the tenth band)
Enter: next question

What this trains

Hearing a frequency region and knowing where it is without sweeping an equaliser to find it. An engineer who can hear that a vocal is harsh around 4 kHz, or a mix is muddy at 250 Hz, goes straight to the right band. The skill is learnt the way any perceptual skill is: many short trials with an immediate, correct answer. It is the method of the classic technical ear-training courses, and of the listener-training software audio manufacturers use to prepare people for listening tests.

How to use it

Set your device volume low. Press Start: pink noise plays with one band changed.
Switch between EQ on and Flat as often as you like (Space). Ask what appeared, and where it lives: low, middle, high.
Pick a band. After a wrong answer, Hear the answer and Hear your pick play the two boosts so you can compare them; the strip under the buttons draws the real filter curve.
A level is passed with 8 of your last 10 answers right. Move up then, or when it feels easy, and switch the source to the drum or band loop.
Check Your bands: the bands you miss most, and whether you guess too high or too low, are the ones to practise in free practice.

Ten minutes a day is enough. Stop when your ears feel tired or the answers turn into guesses; accuracy falls off quickly with fatigue, and a long session at high level does more harm than good.

The levels

Level	Change	Bands	Width
Level 1	Boost 12 dB	125 Hz, 500 Hz, 2 kHz, 8 kHz	Q 1.41 (one octave)
Level 2	Boost 9 dB	63 Hz, 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 4 kHz, 8 kHz	Q 1.41 (one octave)
Level 3	Boost 6 dB	Third-octave, 100 Hz to 10 kHz, 6 neighbours per question	Q 4.32 (a third of an octave)
Level 4	Cut 12 dB	63 Hz, 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 4 kHz, 8 kHz	Q 1.41 (one octave)
Practice	1 to 18 dB, boost, cut or both	Any of the four band sets	Q 0.67 to 4.32

The bands and what they sound like

Centre frequencies are the ISO 266 preferred frequencies, the same numbers printed on graphic equalisers and spectrum analysers. The descriptions are the words engineers commonly use; they are conventions rather than measurements, and neighbouring octaves share some of them.

Centre	Region	A boost sounds	A cut sounds	Lots of energy here
31.5 Hz	Sub-bass	Rumble and pressure more felt than heard; on small speakers, nothing at all.	Tighter, less murky low end; often inaudible except as less speaker excursion.	Pipe-organ pedals, 808 tails, film effects, air-conditioning rumble.
63 Hz	Bass	Weight and thump; the kick drum’s punch and the bass guitar’s floor.	Lighter, leaner low end, less boom in a small room.	Kick drum, bass guitar low notes, the lowest piano octave.
125 Hz	Upper bass	Fullness turning to boom; a one-note bass in a small room.	Thinner, cleaner low end; voices lose chest.	Bass guitar fundamentals, male voice chest tone, floor toms.
250 Hz	Low mids	Warmth turning to mud; a blanket over the mix.	Clearer, more open sound, less wooliness.	Body of guitars, piano and snare; room build-up.
500 Hz	Mids	Boxy, hollow, “cardboard” tone.	Less boxiness; too much and the sound goes scooped.	Snare body, tom resonance, acoustic guitar box.
1 kHz	Mids	Honky and nasal, like talking through a cardboard tube.	Softer, further away, less honk.	Most instruments’ harmonics, the attack of the bass, vocal nasality.
2 kHz	Upper mids	Forward and hard; a telephone or megaphone edge.	Smoother, more distant, less aggressive.	Guitar bite, snare crack, vocal consonants.
4 kHz	Presence	Presence turning to harshness and listening fatigue.	Softer and duller; vocals sink into the mix.	Vocal presence, pick and bow noise, where hearing is most sensitive.
8 kHz	Brilliance	Crisp, then sibilant: spitty “s” and “t” sounds, splashy cymbals.	Duller, less sibilant, darker cymbals.	Hi-hats, cymbals, sibilance, breath.
16 kHz	Air	Air and sheen; subtle, and inaudible to many adult ears.	Very slightly closed-in; often unnoticeable.	Cymbal shimmer, room ambience, the top of a condenser mic.

Third-octave centres (ISO 266)

25 Hz31.5 Hz40 Hz50 Hz63 Hz80 Hz100 Hz125 Hz160 Hz200 Hz250 Hz315 Hz400 Hz500 Hz630 Hz800 Hz1 kHz1.25 kHz1.6 kHz2 kHz2.5 kHz3.15 kHz4 kHz5 kHz6.3 kHz8 kHz10 kHz12.5 kHz16 kHz20 kHz

Level 3 and the third-octave practice set use the bands from 100 Hz to 10 kHz, six neighbours at a time, so each question asks you to place a boost within about two octaves rather than across the whole range.

How the sound is made

Everything is generated in your browser with the Web Audio API; no audio file is downloaded. The pink noise is white noise through Paul Kellet’s filter, which follows the −3 dB per octave slope to within about 0.05 dB. The two loops are synthesised from oscillators and noise at 96 BPM: a pitched sine kick, a noise snare, hi-hats, and in the band loop a bass line and an A minor, F, C, G chord sequence. All sources are set to the same level, −18 dBFS RMS.

The equaliser is a single peaking filter (the Web Audio BiquadFilterNode, which implements the widely used Audio EQ Cookbook design) at the question’s centre, gain and Q. An octave-wide band is Q = √2 ≈ 1.41; a third of an octave is Q ≈ 4.32, from Q = √(2^N) / (2^N − 1) for a bandwidth of N octaves. EQ on and flat use the same filter, set to the question’s gain or to 0 dB, so switching is instant.

Loudness matching. A boost makes the sound louder, which would give the answer away. The trainer integrates the filter’s response over 20 Hz to 20 kHz, weighted by the source’s spectrum and by K-weighting (the ITU-R BS.1770 curve used for loudness metering), and lowers the EQ version by the difference. Worked example: a 12 dB one-octave boost at 1 kHz on pink noise is turned down by 3.1 dB; the same boost at 63 Hz by only 2.1 dB, because K-weighting counts deep bass for less. A limiter just below full scale catches any peak the estimate misses.

Where it stops being reliable

Small speakers. Laptop, phone and tablet speakers reproduce little below 150–200 Hz, so the 31.5, 63 and 125 Hz bands are guesswork on them. Use headphones or proper speakers.
Your hearing. Sensitivity above 12–16 kHz declines with age and noise exposure. If the 16 kHz band is silent for you, that is normal and not something training changes; leave it out by using the 8-band set.
Processing on the device. Bluetooth codecs, operating-system equalisers, “spatial audio” and loudness enhancement all colour the sound before you hear it. Turn them off.
The loops. Music has energy in some bands and not others, so on the loops a boost where nothing is playing is genuinely hard to hear, and loudness matching is an estimate, not a measurement.
Transfer. Naming a boost on a test signal is not the same as mixing well. It gives you the vocabulary and the map; applying it to your own tracks is the rest of the work.

This is a practice tool, not a hearing test, and it cannot tell you anything about your hearing health. If you notice ringing, dullness or discomfort after listening, stop and rest your ears.

Last reviewed 30 September 2026. The method is described on the about page along with every other tool’s.

Common questions

7 answers

How long does it take to learn to hear frequencies?

Most people name octave-band boosts on pink noise reliably after one to three weeks of short daily sessions; third-octave bands and cuts on music take a few months. Ten minutes a day works better than an hour once a week, because this is auditory memory, which consolidates with repetition and sleep. Track the per-band table rather than the score: it shows which regions are still weak.

Why start with pink noise?

Pink noise has equal energy in every octave, so a boost at 125 Hz changes the sound as much as the same boost at 4 kHz. Music is uneven: a boost where an instrument has no energy is nearly inaudible. Learning the bands on noise first gives each one a fair hearing; the drum and band loops then move the skill towards real material.

Why are cuts harder to hear than boosts?

A boost adds something to listen for; a cut removes energy, and the ear notices absence less readily, especially when the cut is narrow. That is why level 4 uses a large 12 dB cut. It is also the more useful skill: most corrective EQ in mixing is cutting.

Why does the EQ version not sound louder?

Because the trainer turns it down by the estimated loudness it adds. A 12 dB octave-wide boost on pink noise raises the overall level by several dB, and a trainer that leaves it in lets you answer by loudness instead of by tone. The estimate uses K-weighting (the ITU-R BS.1770 loudness curve) and the source spectrum; on the loops it is close rather than exact.

Do I need studio headphones or monitors?

No: the skill is telling bands apart, which works on any reasonable headphones. But laptop and phone speakers produce almost nothing below 150 to 200 Hz, so the 31.5, 63 and 125 Hz bands cannot be judged on them, and many adults do not hear the 16 kHz band at all. Train on the headphones or speakers you mix on, with any equaliser or "sound enhancement" in the operating system switched off.

What do gain and Q mean in the practice settings?

Gain is how far the band is raised or lowered, in dB. Q sets how wide the change is: Q 1.41 affects about one octave, Q 4.32 about a third of an octave, and a lower Q is wider and easier to hear. The same two controls are on every parametric equaliser.

Is my progress saved, and can anyone else see it?

Your answers and score are saved in this browser’s local storage so the per-band table survives a reload. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no account. The Reset progress button deletes it, as does clearing site data in the browser.

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