Purpose
This test will help you evaluate the shortest time difference you can hear. This version is the easy one, intended for home-theatre users. You will be asked whether two sounds are synchronized, or not (2-way test).
Musicians and studio engineers, please switch over to the 3-way test (more difficult).
Files being tested
| Sync | Delay (5ms) |
The first file plays an electronic bass drum and an electronic high-hat simultaneously in sync. The other file, introduces a 5 ms delay between the high-hat and the bass drum. Can you hear the difference? If you think so, confirm with the blind test below, or change the target to a shorter timing (on the top of this page).
In a typical 2.1 or 5.1 speaker system, the kick drum will be reproduced by your subwoofer, and the high-hat will be coming from your satellites. At very low timings — 1 or 2 ms, possibly 5 ms in a large room — the different distances between the satellites, the subwoofer, and your ear may cause the 'delayed' variation to be more 'in-sync' by the time the two sounds hit your ear than the actual 'sync' variation. If your speaker system uses a subwoofer, it is recommended that you take this test while wearing headphones, unless you want to test the timing of your speakers.
The Test
| Sync Delay (5ms) | |
| Listen to [?] then vote — multiple guesses not allowed (your vote triggers a new draw) | |
To pass a blind test, you will need to perform 10 trials at least, obtain a high score and reach a high confidence level: 95% is standard to rate statistical significance. It means that your score outperforms random guesses by 95%. There is still a probability that you just got lucky though, 5%. To reduce such probability to 1%, keep testing until you reached a confidence level of 99%.
If you didn't pass this test, try with a longer delay. Change the target on the top of this column.
External Links
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Take up the challenge
- Find the smallest difference in sound levels you can detect.
The Level Series: 6dB 3dB 1dB 0.5dB 0.2dB 0.1dB - Find the highest frequency you can reliably hear.
The Frequency Series: 10kHz 11k 12k 13k 14k 15k 16k 17k 18k 19k 20kHz - Find the smallest difference in pitch (frequency) you can hear.
The Pitch Series: 50c 20c 10c 5c 2c 1c - Find the shortest timing difference you can reliably hear. NEW
The Timing Series: 1ms 2ms 5ms 10ms 20ms 50ms 100ms - Find the highest dynamic range offered by your listening environment.
The Dynamic Range Series: 36dB 42dB 48dB 54dB 60dB 66dB 72dB 78dB - Do you have the absolute hearing ability?
The Perfect Pitch Blind Test: C Scale Chromatic - Are your ears sensitive to Absolute Phase?
The Absolute Polarity Blind Test: Here - Can you hear a difference between 16-bit and 8-bit audio files?
The 16-bit v/s 8-bit Blind Test
