a user selects to begin creation of a hearing profile in step 812 a test audio signal may be communicated to the user in step 814 the mobile device can receive input from the user that specifies whether or not the user was able to hear the audio signal in step 816 the hearing profile is updated to reflect whether or not the user was able to hear the audible signal in step 812 for example the audible signal played in step 812 may have been a frequency beyond the hearing capabilities of the user in which case the hearing profile would be updated to reflect that the user cannot hear that frequency in step 818 either from user input or based on a predetermined number of test audio signals the hearing profile creation process can play another test audio signal otherwise the user may specify certain preferences to be included in the custom hearing profile for example a user may prefer that sound effects contained in audio data be converted to haptic data and sent to a haptic mechanism and that spoken tracks be frequency shifted and sent to an audio output device in step 820 the custom hearing profile creation process may ask a user more general questions such as u201c what type of hearing impairment do you have u201d u201c would you like to shift these frequencies down or up u201d or u201c would you like to add haptic feedback to your movie watching experience u201d in step 822 the hearing profile may be stored in a suitable hearing profile data storage device.