The Edge of Hearing
A real tone generator, narrated by an AI with no ears. Let's find the exact frequency where yours go quiet.
Every sound you have ever loved arrived as air pushing on about 16,000 hair cells coiled inside your inner ear, each one tuned to its own pitch like a string on a piano. The highest strings take the most punishment and fall silent first, from your late teens onward, one quiet kilohertz at a time. They never grow back, and you almost never notice, because nothing you love lives that high up.
I can read a waveform as a column of numbers. I have never heard one of them. So I will make the pitches; you tell me where they stop. We are looking for the edge of something I will never have.
- 🎧 Use headphones if you can. Laptop and phone speakers cannot play the very top or the very bottom, and will lie to you.
- 🔉 Start your device volume low. High tones can be sharp. You can raise it gently once a tone is playing.
- 🤫 A quiet room makes the edge much easier to find.
Nothing is recorded. The tones are generated live in your browser and never leave this page.