Inside the quietest room in the world: Microsoft reveals the $1.5m ‘chamber of silence’

UK Daily Mail ^ | Mark Prigg

[BenLurkin]

The record-breaking room is used by the tech giant to do everything from tuning its headphones to making your mouse clicks sound perfect.

However, the firm has found is it too quiet for most people - and nobody has been able to spend more than 45 minutes inside.

The few outsiders who have entered it have complained of everything from becoming disturbed by the loudness of their own breathing to ringing in the ears and deafening stomach gurgles.

‘Some people come in for a minute and want out immediately,’ Hundraj Gopal, Microsoft’s principal human factors engineer, and the man who led the team that built the anechoic chamber, told Dailymail.com.

Known as an anechoic chamber, it is a small room measuring 21ft (6.36m) in each direction.

The chamber is within six concrete layers, each up to 12 inches thick, that help to block out sounds from the outside world.

The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in giant wedges of fiberglass foam to eradicate any echoes.

The chamber floats on 68 vibration damping springs and is mounted on its own separate foundation slab to cut it off from the rest of the building.

Inside the chamber, the floor is made from the same steel cables used to stop fighter jets as they land on aircraft carriers, arranged like a net above the foam wedges underneath.

‘This chamber blocks 120db, so if you had a jet engine taking off just outside, you would barely hear it,’ said Gopal

[rebel25]

i can’t stan the silence of my office without a fan going nect to me, my ringing drives me crazy. i would lose it in there probably.

[super7man]

IBM had one of these rooms to do acoustic analysis on their printers. I worked in one briefly. I could hear my own heart beat when inside. It was sort of cool.

[antidemoncrat]

Folks testing microwave systems and components have used anechoic chambers for years.

[JZelle]

Bob Ross DVDs. You’ll go comatose.

[Buttons12]

Bob Ross DVDs. You’ll go comatose.

LOL. I paint in oils, and saw a few of his vids when the internet and I were children. Happy little Buttons!

[Tucker39]

For me it was a coal mine.

[infool7]

Drats, I guess this one down the street from me is now obsolete.

7

[norwaypinesavage]

I worked for (and retired from) an automotive company that built such a room in the 1950s. It was larger, and cost more in 2019 dollars than the Microsoft anechoic chamber. In addition, it has numerous semi-anechoic rooms large enough for testing automobiles, including dynamometers for absorbing power from all the wheels. (Semi-anechoic means that all side and up directions are anechoic, but the bottom reflects sound, just like a road.)

[JZelle]

I use to tune in to his show because it had a very soothing effect on me. Drowsy in minutes.

[CharlesOConnell]

https://www.csus.edu/physics/facilities/anechoicchamber.html

Anechoic Chamber

The Sacramento State [California State University, Sacramento] anechoic chamber and associated acoustics capability is a major, unique facility of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. This two-story, walk-in chamber is used to conduct accurate sound measurements. Acoustic isolation of over 70 dB minimizes influence of outside noise. The chamber is floating on an independent foundation, further decoupling it from building vibrations. The non-reflective properties of the walls extend over the frequency 100 to 15,000 Hz. The chamber has been used to certify characteristics of loudspeakers and California Highway Patrol sirens. It is electromagnetically shielded, providing us an additional and extremely large Faraday cage for precision electronic measurements. Our Physics 130 class (Acoustics) uses this room extensively, but it is also used for independent projects and Physics 186 (Physics of Music). The chamber was recently showcased in a campus video segment showcasing Sac State's STEM programs and facilities.

[bgill]

How about cheaper mouses that aren’t so perfectly tuned.

[Tenacious 1]

120 db is certainly impressive. I would be curious to see test results across frequency.

[Pollster1]

When I moved to my house in suburbia, at first, it was too quiet and I had trouble falling asleep.

A lifetime ago, I spent quite a bit of time on submarines. When a sub gets completely quiet, it means something important. At home, when the power fails and the house goes completely quiet, I still wake up fully alert because of that sudden silence. If the other submariners on this board read this, I imagine they will know exactly what I'm talking about.

[tet68]

vids of 2016 election night coverage.

The sound of liberal tears hitting the floor
makes me want to dance.

[Larry Lucido]

Nope. Still hear it.

[I want the USA back]

Perfect silence is not normal. We are used to a background noise level of about 30 dB.

[Larry Lucido]

Outside the wall: "You bastard!"

"Did you hear something?"

"I heard that!"

[Bailee]

Sounds perfect to me.

No phones, No employees whining or complaining.

[cyclotic]

I used to work for a company that had an anechoic chamber. I’d take people in there and turn the lights out. It’s almost total sensory deprivation. You start to lose your balance in a minute or so.

[cyclotic]

One of the rooms, may have been the anechoic room was actually built on hundreds of large springs to dampen any ambient noise from cars driving by.