Understanding the Audiogram

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Hearing thresholds are recorded or plotted on an audiogram. A threshold is the softest level of a presented tone that a person can hear 50% of the time.

• The graph is laid out with low to high frequencies going from left to right and soft to loud sounds going from top to bottom.
• A completed graph indicates your hearing sensitivity for different frequencies at different intensities (different pitches at different loudness levels).
• Hearing is recorded in a unit of loudness called "decibels". Normal hearing ranges from 0 to 20 decibels in all frequencies, as shown on the audiogram below: