I made an online tone generator based on the Firefox Audio API HTML5 Web Audio API. It’s basically a large logarithmic slider that allows real-time, smooth frequency changes.
Features
- Fine-tune the frequency in 1 Hz, 0.01 Hz and 0.001 Hz increments
- Pick a music note from a list (added Sep 2014, revamped May 2016)
- Increase/decrease the frequency by one octave (added Aug 2015)
- Can change the frequency smoothly as you move the slider
- Keyboard shortcuts (added Aug 2015)
- Generate a link to a specific tone, so you can share it (added May 2016)
- Choose sine/square/sawtooth/triangle wave (added Aug 2017)
- Input frequency as a number (added Aug 2017)
- Works well on Chrome, Firefox & Safari – including mobile devices (iOS, Android) – requires a browser with support for the Web Audio API.
There are other tone generators on the Web, but they are not as cool (if I do say so myself) and/or they require Java or Flash.
What can you use a tone generator for? You can do a science experiment with resonance, tune a musical instrument, test your new audio system (how low does it go?), test the limits of your hearing (I can hear virtually nothing above 18,000 Hz, even at maximum volume), or figure out your tinnitus frequency to better target therapy.
Hi Tomasz, ‘
I am a hearing Loss patient who has just been fitted with a Cochlear Implant.
I do have a pro audio background.
THANK YOU for this tool, I was able to stream your sine sweep literally into my brain ( no speakers or Headphones ) and I am using it to teach my brain to hear again. and also to aid my hearing professionals to program ( Map ) my Cochlear.
it is an intense learning curve. My methods may be a little unconventional to some, but its hugely beneficial to me.
JR
Interesting. So what do you hear when you play a sine wave?
Wonderful,
Very good,
Thank you
Interesting, you know that ‘kazoo’ sound that comes from a damaged speaker cone at a specific frequency? I used your app to isolate the speaker and the frequency.
It would be great if you could add up and down arrows for the loudness percentage like you did for the frequency. I’m trying to match the sound with the Solfeggio frequencies for healing and it’s very difficult to change the volume 1% at a time. Thanks!
You can use your arrow keys.
I’m am not a doctor or do I recommend what I say here.
I was suffering from extremely bad ringing, 10khz using this page, and I thought I was going to die. Ringing in the ear has been with me since childhood till now, 41. Never knew it was not normal. Use to think it was the TV downstairs when I was a kid.
Anyways it was so bad 2 weeks ago and I wanted to talk to a doctor. I know this is weird but I talked to my psychiatrist which I won’t list here. I suffer from mental problems such as bipolar depression and schizophrenic tendencies. I started having problems walking so he thought it was problem with the ear. He decided it was possible for my air path behind the ear drum was clogged.
Psychiatrist put me on sudafed, claratin and I was already taking flonase for allergies. Extreme amounts of liquid started coming into my ear and going down my throat. Almost my entire sinus cavity above the middle of my nose was clogged. It made me sick to swallow the stuff coming down my throat so I had to spit it out. After a week my sinuses really cleared and the ringing started to go down and oscillate.
Over two weeks in it’s getting close to gone. It’s still a sharp tone but the volume is way down. TVs, people talking and my own voice is very loud. I would use white noise sometimes to hide the ringing but noise almost hurts now. Sometimes noise will cause some ringing currently.
I’ll try to answer any questions about my experience. I do not recommend doing any of this. You should talk to your doctor.
So you think your tinnitus went down due to the Sudafed and Claritan? the first is a nasal decongestant and the other an antihistamine. You’re lucky your tinnitus is going away since you had it most of your life!
Hi, I found your website researching 40 hz tones. I plan to get a good subwoofer and place it in the corner as suggested so I can feel the sound. I don’t have Alzheimers but a general brain cleanup was mentioned plus a lifting of mood. I read where binaural beats work too so a 40 hz pure tone may not be necessary, I don’t know. A 40 hz light flicker is found on YouTube as well but I wonder about the refresh rate of computers and TV interfering with the flicker rate. Would this happen?
I then read you mentioned using the tone generator to match your tinnitus which I have. I determined mine was around 7000 and 7900 hz. What was interesting was that the more I tried to match it the more the tinnitus faded so I couldn’t hear it as well. I’ve heard of tinnitus matching to give the brain the frequencies it’s missing when you lose some hearing and how that can help with tinnitus. I’d like to make a sweep of those frequencies and download it to play back. Not sure I can do this with your sound generator.
To answer your question, most monitors are 60 Hz which is not divisible by 40 Hz, so you won’t get precise 40 Hz on your screen.
Hi Tomasz, thanks for such a useful and well made tool!
As a recent sufferer of tinnitus, I’ve just made the interesting discovery that if I play a tone in your generator of the exact volume and frequency of the tinnitus, I can hear a vibrato harmony, exactly like when tuning a guitar. This has helped me identify the exact frequency (290.01HZ) and volume of the tinnitus (3%), and when I play the precise tone it even partially cancels out the tinnitus due to the ‘virtual’ sound wave being cancelled by the real sound wave! Fascinating and helpful. Thank you again.
This is AWESOME!!!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!!!! I use this to quickly enter a state of flow for my rigorous university studies and it is truly a blessing. Thank you for this gem!!!
Thanks for this tool! Very handy, has understated UX and has minimal footprint.
You’ve got my support!
Hey, thank you, Tomasz! — Tomasz
Hello I can hear everything even yhe 1 Hz and 20153 Hz. Why is it like that? Aren’t we supposed to hear from 20 Hz to 20000 Hz???
The 1 Hz sound is speaker distortion. It’s possible to hear 20153 Hz if you’re young.
Hi Tomas,
Many thanks for this wonderful app. A specific tinnitus treatment app could be developed from what you’ve already done. Essentially what I’d like to see is 4 channels with a left-right balance so I can generate the harmonic I’m hearing. It’s worth noting that earbuds can often play frequencies outside the range of laptop speakers. At the moment I’m getting by just fine with 2 tabs so this isn’t essential though isolating my frequencies takes a little bit longer.
All the best,
Eoghan
Curious what is the frequency range of typical laptop speakers?
You can check yourself with the generator!
The frequency range doesn’t extend far enough.
So at the age of 19 it seems that my hearing range is between 17hz on both ears to about 19,500hz on my right ear and between 19,550 and 19,600 hz on my left ear. I did this with high quality studio headphones and following the website guidelines of setting a comfortable volume level at 1000 hz.
I am 40 yrs old but even I could hear every frequency even the top one beyond 20k. Ether the system is faulty or I’am not old enough even at 40 lol.
Age 61 here. Was surprised to find my bass end starts to roll off at 60 Hz. I had assumed it was more like 40 Hz. I swear I could hear something even at the 20 kHz frequency, and at lower frequencies too. I can reliably hear 12 kHz without trying. Haven’t yet been able to figure tinnitus frequency, but it’s way up there. Have had tinnitus since very young. A few years ago, I fried the tweeters on my stereo speakers trying to hear the ring tone.
Great website, it even impressed my teacher. only thing left that i would say to improve it is a graph and the wave examples on it.
How can I use this site to have someone experience the difference between 50dB and 45dB?
open 2 separate tabs. set one for 50dB and the other for 45dB. alternate which you play then use both simultaneously
I have a question. When I play 40Hz in the sine wave format I dont hear it but when I play it in the Square Wave or sawtooth Format I do is there a reason for this? Thanks great tool for sound studies…..
The reason would be that your speakers can’t do 40 Hz. You’re hearing the higher harmonics of the square wave. A square wave is 40 Hz + a bunch of higher frequencies.
Hi
It can be used for the tuning of soundboards on stringed instruments by producing chladni patterns on a soundboard.
Hi Tomaz,
Thank you for your amazing tone generator.
I need to be able to share it at a fixed tone so that people cannot change it with the slider.
Is this possible please?
I will surely contribute when i have some funds.
Thank you indeed
Patrick
Thanks! Sorry, you cannot block the slider.
I did this on my dog and he reacted badly. He started barking. Thanks a lot!
Is this available in an exe to be used as a local process to keep my USB DAC from shutting down from no input? I’d like to send the DAC a continuous low frequency signal to keep it active while my computer is on. Thanks!
Sorry, no EXE.
You may want to try this wrapper: https://github.com/nativefier/nativefier
It can wrap the website using Electron as a backend.
I blew my speakers messing around at less than 5 Hz. I left the volume constant, which was pretty loud to begin with on a high powered home setup, but lowered the frequency slowly. I kept thinking it would drop to inaudible levels, but instead it just blew the fuse in my loudspeaker and literally smoked my center channel speaker. I knew the high frequency was dangerous – didn’t realize the low would be as well.
Yikes, sorry to hear that! What sort of speakers are they? Did it happen quickly or after a while?
I’m running a Harman Kardon AVR 445 receiver in “5 channel stereo” mode (4 loudspeakers and a center with no sub). The center speaker is (was) a Boston Micro90c – they should really put fuses in those things. The speaker that blew the fuse is a Cerwin Vega Re Series with a 12″ woofer, mid, and tweeter. I was running tones for about two minutes. I think they blew when I was at or near 1 Hz.
It’s a really cool tool. I didn’t totally take your advice and play the 1K hz at the same volume as the low frequency. It would have been really obnoxious to listen to. I’m in the market for a new car and I like to listen to loud music. I’ve found even the high end stock car stereos to not output enough volume for <80 Hz (kick drums, etc.) so I was going to use your tool over Bluetooth from my phone in the cars to make a more objective comparison on the challenging frequencies. I'll probably end up adding a sub to whatever car I purchase.
Thank you, very useful. I have gait ataxia and I’d noticed somes me walk smoothly so I tried your nose generator. When I got to 156 Hz, my walking went smooth. Now I can play a noise to help me walk 🙂 thank you
Back in my teenager years, I do recalled making “Sound Effects Generator” using only one chip, also along with many resistors, capacitors, switches, and etc. However, I used two transistors to boost amplifier the sound output, in which can makes your brain to yank out or jolt your eyes. So fast-forwarding 35 years later. I can use the program you used on-line. Very interesting!
This website is great for teaching range of hearing – thank you. I have made a small donation to your fantastic work, well done.
Ruth, thank you very much for your support.
Hi Tomasz,
my suggestion: add an additional bottom to your superb tone.generator.
Operation.: pressing/releasing the bootom with the mouse starts and stops the tone.
It gives you an excellent posibility to train MORSE CODE KEYING.
If you should implement it I will suggest to use it in our cq-DL- magazine and also mention it on my website. Hams ( Amateur radio operators) will love it.
How do you like my suggestion?
Best regards,
Knut
Interesting idea. Is manual Morse code commonly used in amateur radio? Don’t ham radio people already have ways to practice keying?
Hi Tom, you are quite right, there are various other tools around to train and use cw as we call morse code keying. CW is in world wide use even by non-amateurs. Just for fun. Get intersted in ham-radio, you soon will like to participate and enjoy all its intersting possibilities…. latest interesting item: QO-100. Try to find it and listen to it. However, simlicity is impotant, therefore:
Turn on the pc , click on icon “cw by tom” and use the mouse for keying. All “you” have to do: get the bottom back you removed because of the suggestion on Dec. 12. 2014 in your comments list and do some programming. I assume readers will try it after they read the short description. Adjust frequency to about 800 Hz to 1 kHz press and release left key of your mouse with big buttom selected and you will here a short sound like dit. Sputnik, the first sattelite did nothig else but transmit; ” dit dit dit dit dit dit” dit dit dit dit dit dit until its death.
I hope you get interested.
73, Knut
Thanks. What about this? https://lcwo.net/transmit
Hi Tom,
great Tom. I have not been on LCWO for a long time, congrats that you found the keying button. I tried it emidiately and it works fine. However users of your tone generator propably do not know how morse keying sounds. They just may give it a try for fun to find out how morse sounds. If you ever should implement the feature it might be difficult to start the tone quickly. Clicking the new button should just start/stop the feature not requireing to have the mouse pointer at the button. I myself would just use it for fun before spending time to start my ham station, hi. Important: It would be a buttom to make your page look symetrical again….
Many thanks for your kind investigation. Just let me know if you would like to try the feature or not. It is not for me for sure.
Best 73’s,
Knut
Knut,
Sure, it might be fun. But because the LCWO tool is much better for Morse enthusiasts, there doesn’t seem much point building an inferior version of the same thing. Maybe I’ll do it if I can think of another application for a push-to-play button.
I wanted to check my subwoofer phasing. Plugged my iPad into the audio setup, set a 70Hz tone, and flipped its phase switch up and down, and checked with a sound level meter. Now I know with confidence that up is correct and down is not. Thank you!
Is there another way to help donate to you besides through paypal? Like maybe cashapp? I love your work!
Thanks for your kind words. I hadn’t known about Cashapp. Looks like it’s only available in US and UK. PayPal is annoying and stale, but still hard to beat for market penetration and international availability.
Maybe someone has already mentioned this. I have tinnitus at 1300Hz, which is the E an octave above the violin’s open E string. By determining the pitch of my tinnitus, I have been able to use it as sort of a built-in tuning fork. I hear it more clearly at night when everything else is quiet. Therefore, I can imagine and mentally “rehearse” music using my tinnitus as a reference!
That’s awesome!
I wish there was a repetition rate button, where you can change the speed of the tone repeating.