THE TEST
Do you hear colors?
Eight sounds, each played twice in shuffled order. Pick the color each one brings, or no color if nothing arrives. Your score is consistency: whether the same sound gets the same color from you both times. That is how researchers test for chromesthesia, and it cannot be gamed by guessing.
16.TRIALS +++ NO.SIGNUP +++ 2.MINUTES**
Use headphones or decent speakers. Answer fast and honestly; first instinct beats deliberation here.
TRIAL.01/16**
YOUR.SOUND.COLOR.PROFILE**
Five slots, built from your most consistent picks. This is exactly the palette format Photism renders with: your music, in colors like these, live in Ableton.
How the scoring works
Every sound appears twice, and the order is shuffled so memory cannot anchor to position. For each sound we measure the perceptual distance between your two color picks (in Lab color space, where distance approximates how different two colors look). Small distances across the board mean your pairings are stable, the property that synesthesia has and imagination lacks. The method is a compressed version of test-retest consistency, the standard behind research instruments like the synesthesia battery.
One honest caveat: a single sitting is easier than the real thing. Genuine verification retests after months, when memorized answers have decayed and only perception remains. Score high here and the right next step is to come back cold in a few months, or take a research battery.
Questions
Is this a real synesthesia test?
It uses the mechanism real tests use: consistency. Sounds repeat in shuffled order and your score measures how closely your repeat picks match. A single session is a screen, not a diagnosis; genuine verification retests months apart, which is the standard used in research batteries.
What score means I have chromesthesia?
High in-session consistency (80 or above here) is synesthete-range behavior and worth a proper follow-up months from now. Most people without synesthesia land in the middle: everyone has some sound-color intuitions, and that is normal cross-modal perception, not a failed result.
What if I feel nothing when I hear the sounds?
Pick 'no color'. Feeling nothing is a legitimate answer and most people's honest one. Consistently choosing no color is more informative than forcing choices, and the test scores it accordingly.
Does the test work with hearing or vision differences?
The sounds span low to high frequencies, so significant hearing loss in a range will affect those trials. Color vision deficiency changes which colors you distinguish but not the consistency logic itself, since the test compares your picks only against your own.