PSYCHOACOUSTICS-WEB: a free online tool for the estimation of basic auditory sensitivity thresholds

PSYCHOACOUSTICS-WEB is an online tool written in javascript and php that enables the estimation of auditory sensory thresholds via adaptive threshold tracking. The toolbox implements the transformed up-down methods suggested by Levitt (1971) for a set of classic psychoacoustical tasks: frequency, intensity, and duration discrimination of pure tones; duration discrimination and gap detection of noises; amplitude modulation detection with noise carriers. The toolbox can be used through a common web browser, it works both with fixed and mobile devices, and requires no programming skills. PSYCHOACOUSTICS-WEB is suitable for laboratory, classroom and online testing and is designed for two main types of users: an occasional user and, above all, an experimenter using the toolbox for his/her own research. This latter user can create a personal account, customise existing experiments and share them in the form of direct links to further users (e.g., the participants of a hypothetical experiment). Finally, because data storage is centralised, the toolbox offers the possibility to set the basis of a database of auditory skills.