PSA: The Dangers of Pure Tones, Tone Generators and Frequency Sweeps

Dear community! It is my concern to address an important issue. I am surprised that no one here has discussed this topic yet.

I did a lot of research and found strong circumstantial evidence that indicates that pure tones are extremely dangerous. As I have read in several posts, some users test their hearing with pure tones or tone generators. The users have no idea of the danger they are exposing themselves to. Some even use headphones or earphones.

What few people know: pure tones are dangerous, extremely dangerous. The evidence I will cite indicates that. This includes sine tones, square tones and so on. The danger is comparable to a loud boom or strong sonic impulse. Medicine and even academic research are still unaware of the danger of pure tones. It is very poorly studied, but the evidence is clear: one can easily and quickly suffer an acoustic trauma from pure tones, with consequences that may last a lifetime. This includes tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and hearing loss.

It doesn't matter whether you use a tone generator or play one of the several videos you find on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok. Pure tones are pure tones. Those “test your hearing” or “how old is your hearing” videos are just as dangerous as a tone generator. The danger is the same.

We all know that noise and loud music are dangerous for the hearing. It can cause tinnitus and hearing loss. The danger is even greater with pure tones. Pure tones do not occur in nature and are produced technically. Pure tones are more dangerous than normal noise or loud music! The danger threshold for pure tones is significantly lower! Why are pure tones so dangerous? Unlike music or normal noise, a pure tone acts on only a single frequency. With pure tones, only a single frequency is affected in the inner ear. This is what makes pure tones so dangerous. With pure tones, the entire sound energy acts on only one frequency. Concentrated energy like a laser beam!

At a very high frequency, the risk is no longer calculable! In the worst case, one can suffer hearing damage with tinnitus in a fraction of a second! The higher the frequency, the more dangerous it is! Even tones that you do not perceive can damage your hearing and lead to tinnitus and hearing loss.

What does the frequency mean in hertz? The frequency indicates the number of oscillations in one second. Let's take a frequency of 14 kHz as an example, I chose this frequency arbitrarily, it is already very dangerous as a pure tone, extremely dangerous! What does this mean for the hair cells in the inner ear? The hair cells here have to oscillate 14.000 times a second! That is more than an internal combustion engine in a car has to perform! And now consider: the entire sound energy acts on the hair cells that are responsible for this frequency! Unbelievable, isn't it? The hair cells cannot withstand the sound pressure and this high oscillation. They either die immediately or later. This is usually when the tinnitus sets in.

There is also a reason why most people find pure tones very unpleasant. These tones are perceived as piercing and hurting. By the way: pure tones hardly ever occur in nature. Pure tones are usually produced technically.

You should read the following posts. Several people have accidentally acquired permanent tinnitus through the use of a tone generator. The probability is very high that this tinnitus is accompanied by permanent hearing damage. It is remarkable that almost all persons were exposed to these pure tones for only a few seconds. This shows that pure tones are very dangerous and are not to be used as a toy.

1. The Greek Tragedy: I Acquired Tinnitus While Trying to Soothe It
2. Tinnitus Much Worse After Checking Tinnitus Frequency with Pure Tone Generator
3. Hearing Loss and Severe Tinnitus — From Loving Life to Suicidal in 2 Months
4. Morse Code Tinnitus + Whooshing Sound + Hyperacusis/Dysacusis
5. Tinnitus for 5 Months from Testing My Hearing with Pure Tones on My Headphones and Speakers
6. How Does Hearing Get Damaged at Specific Frequencies?

There is a Polish man who offers a tone generator on his website. As you can read below, some people reported getting tinnitus from using his tone generator. Only when a user complained to him about it did he insert a warning on his website. Even now the warning is only general and he continues to downplay the danger of the pure tones. Either he is really ignorant or he doesn't care about his users.

1. User Report #1
2. User Report #2
3. User Report #3
4. User Report #4

That's not all. Also on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok where these "test your hearing" videos can be found, I often read comments such as: "The video is over, but I can still hear the tone". Other users report that their ears feel "full" after playing these tones. In my opinion, this is a strong indication that the pure tones are extremely dangerous and can cause tinnitus and hearing damage within a few seconds.

If that is not enough proof, marten repellers and rodent repellers also utilize pure tones. In Switzerland, a man suffered an acoustic trauma from such a device. The hair cells in the inner ear suffer a shock trauma as soon as the device is switched on. Unfortunately, such devices utilize pure tones, too. In the worst case, the hair cells are even ripped out! This man went to court and has a website (in German) to warn other people about the dangers of marten repellers and pure tones. This man has also done scientific research and explains scientifically why pure tones are very dangerous. He explains very clearly why the exposure limit of pure tones is significantly lower than that of loud music or ordinary noise. This does not mean that loud music or ordinary noise is harmless. You may use a online translator if you don't understand German.

His website can be found here.

Marten repellers should be banned by law because they are too dangerous. Normally social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok should be obliged to remove the videos that contain pure tones. And these tone generators should be taken off the internet. It's one of the few things on the internet that can actually harm you permanently. Every day, clueless users stumble upon them.

It is advisable not to play pure tones. If you do, then with the utmost caution.

Safety rules for listening to pure tones:​

1. Pure tones are more dangerous than normal noise or loud music.
2. Never play pure tones at full volume!
3. Never play pure tones at high volume!
4. Never use headphones or earphones when listening to pure tones!
5. Never increase the volume if you cannot perceive a tone!
6. Play pure tones only for a short time!
7. At high frequencies, even half the volume is too much and dangerous!
8. Pure tones can not only damage your hearing, but also destroy your speakers!

 

Thank you for the highly detailed warning about pure tones. I plan to share this information to help others avoid this menace.

Also, welcome to the forum!

 

Thank you very much! That is exactly why I wrote this post, to warn other people about the danger!

 

There really is no scientific evidence that this tone or that tone is dangerous in and of itself, what is dangerous is the volume and the length of time of exposure, or the "push" behind the sound. A pure tone is simply a sound w/ one frequency. That's benign at low volumes, which is why it is safe to be used to test people's hearing, calibrate audio equipment, etc. A loud pulse or a sudden loud sound is dangerous because of its percussive qualities. Things like a gun being fired or the sudden backfire of a car. Decibels and the length of time we are exposed to sound are what we need to take into consideration, not whether a tone is simple or complex.

Most people's exposure to pure tones happens when they're given a hearing test, and that is 8 kHz or below. An audiologist, who is highly trained in sound, is not going to use a sound at a volume that will cause problems, they know what they're doing. Low frequency sounds could cause damage, the military has experimented w/ those to use in war, but again, the volume and length of exposure is the issue.

When you get to the very low kHz you're dealing more with vibration than actual sound. There has been a lot written about whales and other sea creatures being damaged by the military's use of sound/sonar, but the volume is the culprit. Just about anything can be dangerous if you are exposed to too much of it. I'm not going to avoid a hearing test because of pure tones because the level of volume and the short time of exposure is perfectly safe. Other than that, I can't think of a time when I would be exposed to pure tones.

 

I noticed years ago that after listening to pure tones, my tinnitus flared up temporarily.

Keep the volume down.

 

You are naive. The audiologist by the ENT office I went to three times gets to see you first before the ENT, asks NO questions why you are even there, and just proceeds to do a whole slew of tests, including acoustic reflex, tympanometry and audiogram. If I wasn't prepared and told them to do nothing except audiogram, they would have further killed my hearing. The ENT would happily apply suction to remove wax even for a patient who just suffered from acoustic trauma. The same ENT referred me to an MRI to further fuck me up.

The "medial professionals," when it comes to hearing, are beyond dangerous.

The first time my tinnitus was truly bad (and permanently stayed so, 7 months now since that visit) was the next day after the audiologist/ENT visit where I only had the audiogram done. My further worsening seemed to follow additional audiogram tests. I am not going to have any audiogram tests done again.

Remember, they can get away with this shit, because how would you prove their "standard" and accepted medical practices harmed you? They simply have no clue and refuse to believe they can do harm (not that they actively want to harm you).

 

Audiologists have no concept AT ALL that a hearing test can do further damage to someone with damaged ears.

It is an intensely ignorant area of an audiologist's knowledge - and they are all the same.

And if you do get further damage (worse tinnitus or hearing loss) from an audiogram, the audiologist would take no responsibility for this whatsoever. It would be your fault, something you must have done, your anxiety... (the usual mantra).

Hearing tests and the rest are sound intrusive procedures and an MRI (over 100 dB) even more so.

Protect your ears from these so-called experts. You literally have no come-back if they mess you up further.

 

I am not sure you understood the point @Quintus tried to bring across. Look at this (click to enlarge):



The blue graph shows the frequency analysis of white noise, the pink graph shows that of a pure sine tone. When measured in decibels, both are equally loud. But it is easy to see how the sine tone's energy is concentrated like a laser beam, and easy to imagine how this might do more damage than the noise.

No they don't. Some might, but it would be a suicidal mistake to count on that.

Even if someone had, some things bear repeating

 

The Swiss guy whose website I mentioned in my post above gives excellent explanations as to why pure tones are extremely dangerous. I found a document which was written by him and translated it into English by using an online translator. I attached the document. He refers to marten repellers in his document because he suffered an accident through the use of such a device. Since these devices also use utilize pure tones, the same applies to those tone generators or those "test your hearing" videos that can be found in countless numbers on social media.

For example, he believes that a pure tone of 20 kHz is a thousand times more dangerous than a pure tone of 2 kHz.

When one considers that many users of these tone generators or "test your hearing" videos have gotten tinnitus within a few seconds or later, it makes sense. I think this danger is very poorly researched to date. The circumstantial evidence pointing to the danger of pure tones cannot be denied.

For safety reasons one should never play pure tones, not even the low frequencies.

 

Upon reading the initial post, I was skeptical, as any kinds of sounds, including white noise, contain the same individual frequencies. So it wouldn't make sense that only individual frequencies are dangerous. This graph explains it nicely in terms of sound power. If both sounds are perceived as equally loud, then the individual frequency sound still has a disproportionate amount of power concentrated in one spot.

The only nitpick could be that sound power might not be equal to the perceived loudness.

This should be unrelated. They are "designed" to do so. Human hearing can go up to 29 kHz in some cases, so it's about 60000 hair movements per second — still within natural limits.

 

Not "might." I think there is a wide consensus that sound power is not proportional to the perceived loudness, but varies with frequency (google "Fletcher-Munson").

IMO this would only be a nitpick if perceived loudness were equal to the risk of harm. Do you think that this is the case?

 

I compared a pure tone, in this case 14 kHz, with a music track. On the left side the pure tone, on the right side the music track. As you can see, the pure tone already looks threatening and dangerous in the graphic, and it is. A pure tone of a frequency of 14 kHz is already extremely dangerous and has led to tinnitus within a few seconds for some users who have used a tone generator. It is very likely that hearing damage has also been caused. You can see very clearly that all sound energy is focused and is concentrated energy like a laser beam. Here is the danger. Our hearing is not made for such tones!



The graphical view of the piece of music shows that the total sound energy is distributed over all frequencies. It is remarkable that the very high and dangerous frequencies are only weakly present here, no danger is to be expected here. The high frequencies here are produced by the harmonics of the musical instruments.

I don't understand why these videos with pure tones are spread in countless numbers on social media. It is irresponsible, as is the availability of tone generators, which can be found on many internet sites.

 

I wish I had read this thread 7 years ago. I listened to one of those hearing tests online that cycled through four high tones. After, I came to the harrowing realization that I was still hearing them, in the exact same order, at the exact same tempo. This was only after 20 seconds of participating in the test. I eventually did habituate to it. But even to this day if I try to focus on it, it re-emerges. Additionally after I had this happen, this whole “I hear a sound and then it sometimes becomes replicated as tinnitus” thing started happening with me. Maybe confirmation bias but I dare say that was the reason.

At the moment I worry that I have Reactive Screaming Tinnitus. Hearing screams whenever I hear sound. The louder the sound, the louder the screams.

As someone who sings professionally for a living, this has been devastating, because I found so much comfort singing in a choir. Now if I do so, it’s a chorus of screams. I feel robbed of the one thing I felt called to do. Sometimes I wonder if continuing with my life is possible for me.

 

Plausible deniability, huh. Sadly, I find the OP's post of an insufficient erudition for predicting the effects of pure tones, hence, it smacks of low-effort and argument from incredulity.

 

Tinnitus is a horror in itself regardless of circumstances but adds another layer of loss and torture for those of us who used to enjoy music. Music used to be my life. Now I never hear music anymore and probably never will. Nor can I read books due to horrible tinnitus.

I hope yours will decrease so you can enjoy singing again

 

I had suction removal of my earwax about a year ago. It was super loud and he didn’t even ask me for my approval. He just went ahead and did it. It was louder than any exterior noise I’ve ever dealt with.

 

I had an ENT suction out lidocaine before an IT shot. It was not that loud, personally.

 

I'm a recent victim of these kinds of tests, and it's my impression that they're indeed more dangerous than the typical music and other sounds.

Is there anyone who managed to recover from tinnitus caused by these tests, or has it always proved to be permanent?

 

This is a very interesting topic. I'm convinced this type of sound has at least for several months made my tinnitus worse. Back in June this year I listened to an audio frequency video on YouTube from 0 Hz to 16000 Hz or something like that. After 9000 Hz or so I hardly heard anything/nothing. Later that day a louder tone developed in my head and it took months before that died down. While my tinnitus used to be super silent when waking up, it is now a constant sound, immediately there when waking up. I have had tinnitus for almost a year now.

 

I think that if audiograms could damage hearing, we would have more than 50 million with tinnitus.

I work with a number of audiologists who actually have tinnitus. One would think that they would have a vested interest in this kind of knowledge. I think hearing specialists get a bad rep because they often can’t help with this condition because it is more neurological and they get blamed.

How should we test hearing if not with audiograms?

 

I am not convinced that an audiogram in a clinical setting can do actual harm. The bigger danger is from people doing online hearing tests and cranking up volume beyond safe levels.

One should watch out for the acoustic reflex test, though. This test uses loud sounds and is contraindicated for tinnitus.

 

They do not do the acoustic reflext test on me specifically because I have tinnitus.

I sent my ENT some of the information from this thread to see what she has to say about it. Interestingly, she also has tinnitus.

 

The problem is: the normal hearing tests only go up to 8 kHz, while these online hearing tests that are responsible for a few people's tinnitus go all the way to 20 kHz, and these high frequencies are way more dangerous.

I'm looking forward to hearing what your ENT has to say about this topic.

 

I would like to know what you think about the following statement:

If microsuction could damage hearing, we would have more than 50 million with tinnitus.

If you believe this is false, then: why? It is the exact same reasoning.

 

I didn't understand a thing: you said later that day a louder tone developed in your head and it took months before that died down, but from what I read later, you said it never went away?

 

That died down but not completely and my tinnitus changed from silent in the morning, to being there from waking up. That wasn't the case before I listened to this.

Makes sense?

 

@Quintus, I really appreciate your thoughts here and I do think you're speaking to a real problem, but I think it has everything to do with non-clinicians being reckless with consumer hardware, and very little to do with pure tones.

Outline of post:

• Explanation of what pure tones are and how they relate to sounds in nature
• Comparison of waveforms from a pure tone vs a folded complex tone
• Observation that safety points 1-8 are not specific to pure tones, with an explanation of why
• Overview of headphones and speakers, and why it's often dangerous to use any of them unless you invest in good equipment
• Ovverview of why microsuction is not comparable to pure tone testing
• Slightly self-congratory picture of my sonic workshop, along with my history with it, and safety notes.

Yep. I appreciate the intent of this thread, and, also, while I have definitely given myself some spikes from pure tones that's just because I work with pure tones a lot.

Let's clear up some misinformation:

1) "Pure tone" is understood to reflect sine waves almost exclusively. Actually you're much more likely to do damage to yourself with square waves at the same volume, because they deliver more acoustic energy at the same frequency and amp.

2) The main thing that separates a pure tone from "things found in nature" is that the generation of almost any sound outside a very contrived artificial environment will contain harmonics -- but they still have the fundamental frequency. Examples of things that oscillate at a fundamental freq in nature are tremendous, and believe me, as a saxophone player (which is a horn that throws a TON of harmonics around), harmonics do not protect you. It is really just a matter of "how much noise, how much did we overwhelm the ability of magnesium channel signaling in the inner ear to prevent damage"?

3) Let's consider this:



What we're looking at here is a "pure tone" sinewave on one OSC channel, and then a "complex tone" which has been bent and wavefolded in various ways.

Crank the audio to have a fundamental frequency of, say, 4 kHz, crank the decibels to 100, and in either case I would run out of the room screaming like a maniac. "Sine waves" do have a lot of special mathematical properties (not the least of which is that the definition of a harmonic is a tone that is a perfect multiple of the fundamental, and a subharmonic is a tone that's a perfect divisor of the fundamental)

4) I don't really want to get into the headphone argument* (some notes below) except to say, it's certainly a lot easier to accidentally jack up your hearing with headphones. But the safety rules 1-8 in the OP, really apply to listening to any sound.

There's also reasonable evidence that chronic exposure to broad band noise is... especially damaging. And that's pretty much the opposite of a pure tone, but, also, broad band noise delivers more acoustic energy at the same amplitude than a pure tone does.

I disagree strongly and I've been tested up to 16-18 kHz clinically (UMich bimodal stimulation study).

I'd say that "people who are not clinicians, using consumer headsets outside of noise proof rooms using "online hearing tests" are at risk of damaging their hearing if they are not careful.

I've definitely given myself (very brief) spikes, from messing with tone generators (web based, synthesizer modulators, etc) but I've had my hearing tested clinically dozens of times including the real high frequencies. It's never been a problem. There may be some tiny minority of people whose hearing is so damaged that simple pure tone audiometry at the usual levels can be risky; additionally, anyone who has such a test while having profound hearing loss is at some risk because the test may get into dangerous levels just to provoke a response.

Those are all related, but tangential issues.

* A note on headphones and speakers - a given spectral, positional set of audio delivered to the ear drum at the same volume, will have the same impact on the hearing system no matter how it was generated and delivered but inexpensive consumer hardware often has wildly bad frequency response curves, a muddy high end, etc. This may prompt people to turn things to dangerous volumes in some parts of the frequency spectrum, just to make things listenable in others.

The solution to this is to use expensive, well calibrated audio gear. I have a 7.1 setup for movies downstairs and I can hear everything great at non-ear-splitting volumes, but it's all Polk gear with an expensive self-calibrating Denon receiver.

Likewise, when I am doing audio mixing, I default to using good monitor speakers at the lowest effective volume (I have a dB meter on the wall) and when I do need to use headphones I use either Blon B20s ($300 cans that can compete easily with a lot of $500-600 cans), or, on the go, Sony MDR-v600s which are less phenomenal but are the 40-year-battle-tested solution for the tinnitus-having musician who wants non-occlusive headphones on the go.

I think microsuction can be harmful to a substantial amount of people, and that properly conducted pure tone audiometry, if it's dangerous at all, is dangerous to a tiny minority of people who already have severe problems.

Why do I believe this? I've had both done and there's no comparison, microsuction sounds like a jet engine. To me this argument is similar to "because the engine noise from the inside of a car is generally safe, the engine noise from a motorcycle is, too". These are both wild apples-to-golf-ball comparisons.

Additionally, microsuction subjects the eardrum and ear canal to mechanical pressure which can be significant and is not part of tone testing. These things just are not the same.

We also clearly do have more than 50 million adults in the US with tinnitus but it doesn't map to microsuction, and, while microsuction trauma shows up here a lot, none of the dozen or so adults I know who have had it done have any tinnitus or hearing issues they attribute to it, nor did they suffer any weird effects after the procedure besides "holy wow, I can hear again!"

That was my own basic experience, even though as you might expect I was very nervous about it. I didn't have a choice, I had a chunk that was resilient to the best efforts at manual removal with tools and was at risk of causing an infection, so I rolled the dice. It was in my bad ear, too... but done by a very smart and compassionate ENT who was very aware of my tinnitus. I'd prefer to never do that again and I take steps to keep my ears cleaner, but, in the same situation I would personally make the same dice roll because an infection that causes any part of the ear drum to become necrotic is more dangerous and painful.

Anyway, I think I have said all I need to but also if pure tones are something you find alarming, here's some nightmare fuel.

In the below picture I count, quickly, over twenty things that can easily produce pure tones and about six acoustic instruments which can produce a set of pure tones plus harmonics that can trivially be driven into 110 dB range very easily by blowing or pounding on them aggressively.

I've been doing all this stuff since 2015 or so with no changes to my hearing thresholds and if anything substantially calmer tinnitus than I had in 2015 (I do take meds now, since 2017, YMMV), and, also, working with this stuff, even with lots of pure tones, and even for hours straight, never causes me any weird ear sensations or effects. Because I mix at like 70 dB.

Real musicians might say "70 dB? you can't make a great mix at 70 dB!" and I would agree but I'm just doing this stuff for funsies and I'd rather protect my hearing than upload The Perfect Mix.



As with all of my posts about audio and audio production: I seem to be capable of doing some amount of things, which others on Tinnitus Talk might find painful or difficult, and after a decade doing much of it, I do not believe it's harming me but that does not mean that my workflows for making noise, stacking firewood, operating powered saws, etc, are "safe", for me, or for anyone else.

Use your own best judgement in all things. As much as I am gung ho on doing stuff other people might balk at, I also strongly believe that the risk of "excessive noise avoidance" is ridiculous and overblown, whereas the risk of "excessive noise exposure" is obvious, real, and also personal to some extent because of genetic and lifestyle factors.

I believe that for the first couple years following my trauma, I engaged in what I might now call an "excessive" level of noise avoidance and I think this was actually healthy and helped me re-calibrate my expectations and re-evaluate my life goals.

I also believe, strongly, that cumulative noise exposure matters a whole LOT, and that the fact that my ears settled down when I moved from a major city, to the country, is not a coincidence at all. Yes, out here we get some "country sounds", dynamite blasting, people who just absolutely insist on shooting fully automatic weapons close to nightfall, etc. But, all that stuff is fairly infrequent as compared to the incessant 75-85 dB din I had overhead from 2010-2016 when I lived 2 miles from a major metro airport, surrounded by 3 superhighways, in an apartment that was usually 65 dB indoors just from external noises.

These days, if I am home alone and not listening to music, my office averages about 43 dB.

 

Hi all,

This is relevant to an issue I'm having.

I like to ride bikes, both traditional and e-bikes. My e-bike triggers my tinnitus afterwards, even though it doesn't seem to bother me while riding. (I have controlled for wind noise, speed, etc.)

When blipping the throttle inside and listening to the motor and gears, even up close, nothing seems to bother me. A few minutes afterwards, however, my tinnitus spikes. The sound is harsher and more present.

I do want to keep the e-bike because I enjoy riding it, but part of me has been very afraid to ride it over the past month, which has led to some hyper focusing on this. After riding my traditional bike I try to focus on tinnitus to see if it will spike, but it doesn't seem to make it worse.

When I play musical instruments the harshness and fatigue is also apparent after these spikes.

Curious if anyone thinks this is related and dangerous?

P.S. I also get this from hiss coming from my studio monitors

For both, the question is: legitimate health concern or benign sounds amplified by extreme fixation/hyper-focus/fear.

 

Update: I got rid of that e-Bike. I strongly agree with the OP, both based on my personal experience (EVs, e-Bikes, drones, speaker hiss, etc.) and emerging studies. My ears tend to fatigue from high frequency tonal sounds. The feeling lasts well after the event.

In the electric vehicle field, automotive engineers are acutely aware that the tonal high frequencies that motors and inverters create are very annoying to the ear. They use numerous methods to reduce these sounds from passive sound deadening, motor stator patterns that reduce noise, expensive ultra-sonic inverters, and one model I'm aware of even wastes some torque/more to run the motor in a way that creates a more pleasing lower pitched sound.

I just came across an interesting piece from the Belgian Federal Public Service (Health, Food Chain Safety, Environment).

Hopefully we will see more scientific studies in this area of hearing.

 

I have an e-Bike. I used to ride it with no earplugs, but I was often riding with no assist or low assist, so it was pretty quiet. And then about 2 years ago, I started wearing foam earplugs when I bike. It's really quiet now, but I actually started wearing the earplugs due to the much louder wind noise. I also have low-frequency tinnitus, which I thought might have been caused by wind noise from so much bike riding, and I thought it could worsen my higher frequency tinnitus which elevated to a new level back then.