In pure tone audiometry, an audiometer is used to play a series of tones using headphones.

Pure tone audiometry was carried out by an audiological technician or scientist under sound proof conditions unless, according to age, free field audiometric assessment was required.

The test should not be used to assess the sensitivity of hearing and the results of this test should always be viewed in conjunction with pure tone audiometry.

Pure tone audiometry (PTA) is the key hearing test used to identify hearing threshold levels of an individual, enabling determination of the degree, type and configuration of a hearing loss.

Children with amblyaudia experience difficulties in speech perception, particularly in noisy environments, sound localization, and binaural unmasking (using interaural cues to hear better in noise) despite having normal hearing sensitivity (as indexed through pure tone audiometry).

Some hearing tests include the whispered speech test, pure tone audiometry, the tuning fork test, speech reception and word recognition tests, otoacoustic emissions (OAE) test and auditory brainstem response (ABR) test.

This test can be used to estimate the hearing thresholds in patients who are unable to perform normal pure tone audiometry and can also give information about the vestibular and facial nerves and indicate if a lesion may be present.