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A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it
- jawns 14y agoI was hoping for more science-y details. Any HN folks care to give a better explanation of what's going on here?
- dsr_ 14y agoThe room is anechoic and insulated. Anechoic means that the walls are treated to absorb all the sound waves that hit them, and not reflect them back. (Typically, anechoic surfaces are soft and cannot support much weight, so [guess] there is probably a support system to put weight bearing platforms inside.) Insulated means that sounds from outside the room are not transmitted in. A lot of concrete can take care of the high frequencies, but low frequencies often require special suspensions to keep sounds from the earth out. The most interesting thing is the measured extent of what they've produced.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ImprovedSilence 14y agoI've been in a few before. They are used a lot for testing the RF properties of wireless products. They basically let nothing from the outside in, and allow for no reflection on the inside. Thus you can isolate the characteristics of your device from any other possible surrounding noise. I usually get a headache after being in one for awhile, but I always assumed that's because the pointy foam shit smells like fresh paint.
- NewInstall 14y agoThe term is used for both RF and Audio wave absorbing rooms, but in this case they are talking explicitly about a room that doesn't reflect Sound.
- ImprovedSilence 14y agoWouldn't they be the same thing, just "tuned" to block out different frequency ranges? I'm guessing the tuning is based on the material and shape of the foam, and thickness and material of the walls? It's all waves.
- efraim 14y agoSound waves and radio waves are not the same thing.
- CamperBob2 14y agoThey're not the same things, no, but they obey the same wave mechanics, and due to the difference in propagation velocity, their wavelengths are actually very close. A wavelength of 3 meters is about 100 MHz in the RF world, and 1 kHz in audio terms. That's why an RF anechoic chamber looks a lot like an acoustical anechoic chamber, and often sounds like one too.
- Anechoic 14y agoA wavelength of 3 meters is about 100 MHz in the RF world, and 1 kHz in audio terms. An acoustic wavelength at STP is around 1ft/30cm, not 3m (which is closer to 100 Hz).
- CamperBob2 14y agoD'oh, you're right; I started punching calculator buttons with 1100 f/s and turned it into meters somehow. Point stands, though.
- Anechoic 14y agoIt's all waves. EM waves vs pressure waves, they're not the same thing (although the math is basically the same, just with different constants). Something that affects an EM wave won't necessarily affect a pressure wave - a Faraday cage for example will block EM waves but won't do anything to block sound waves.
- bandy 14y agoI'm sure many people could, starting with the Deaf. I'd certainly enjoy a break from the incessant yammering of humanity.
- Anechoic 14y agoI'd certainly enjoy a break from the incessant yammering of humanity. It's not just a break from humanity, it's a break from everything (including nature, which typically fills the void when humanity is absent). If you haven't been in a very quiet space, it becomes disorienting very quickly. The quietest space I've been in has been <12 dBA (my measurement equipment only went that low so I couldn't get the true Lmin). At that level, I could hear the blood rushing through my ear. I have a minor case of tinnitus which is typically inaudible, but in that space it was like an alarm clock screaming into one ear. The other ear seemed to desperately find something to "lock" onto, so it was amplifying every little thing it could. After about 15 minutes I wound up opening a window to let a little wind noise into the room. That raised noise levels up to about 19 dBA and was much more comfortable.
- mikecane 14y ago>>>I have a minor case of tinnitus which is typically inaudible, but in that space it was like an alarm clock screaming into one ear. Ah, I was wondering about that. (Now scrolls up to delete question asked elsewhere.)
- jakejake 14y agoI have tinnitus as well. The idea of a totally quiet room gives me the creeps, I know I wouldn't be able to stand it for more than a few minutes.
- lincolnwebs 14y agoYou're sure? I don't understand deafness to mean not sensing any vibrations whatsoever.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- coreygoodie 14y agoBeing completely deaf in one ear, I'm sure I could last 90 minutest at least. A cool article, but a bit sensationalist.
- mistercow 14y agoI like that your process for calculating how long you could last appears to consist of multiplying the amount of time others can last by their ratio of working ears to yours. Science!
- azelfrath 14y agoAs I read his comment I was going to write basically what you did, but I thought "No. No, that is too nerdy." So thank you =D Relevant: I do wonder though if the disorientation would be less for someone with complete deafness in one ear. I would think that they are already somewhat used to the balance/orientation issues.
- igorsyl 14y agoI wonder what it sounds like in units of noise cancelling headphones.
- nodrama 14y agoyes, noise is pollution. I would tax cars based on air and noise pollution and nothing else.
- eru 14y agoWhy nothing else? How about congestion?
- joshu 14y agoThat's spatial pollution.
- koglerjs 14y agoAnd [ugly car du jour] is aesthetic pollution.
- nodrama 14y agoI would tax buildings-activities for congestion. If you rent a building for residential use: no tax. If you rent it to be used as a Shopping Center: big tax. If on top of that, they don't have a big parking space: huge tax.
- eru 14y agoBig parking spaces just subsidies and encourage car use. (At least that's the line of the UK government, and the reason why they basically require you to have less parking spaces than household units in new residential developments.)
- nodrama 14y agoyes. That's why I said you will also be taxed if you attract traffic in a congested area.
- zwieback 14y agoWe used to have one at HP. I hated going in there, supremely disorienting and creepy, especially with the weird panels on the walls.
- X-Istence 14y agoHe mentioned that people generally can't be in there longer than 45 minutes. I would love to test that theory. Give me a desk, a laptop, and let me get to work. The most interesting thing would be whether or not my tinnitus is going to drive me insane or not :P
- rokhayakebe 14y agoIn a room this quiet I assume using keyboard will sound very loud.
- dsirijus 14y agoQuite the opposite - hence, 'quiet room'.
- rokhayakebe 14y agoHow do you hear your heartbeat if you can cannot hear your keyboard keys when pressed?
- Timst 14y agoNot to mention the ventilator, the HDD, and the rest of the electronic components.
- jrabone 14y agoI've worked in one of these for a happy summer making measurements of acoustic diffuser panels. I quite enjoyed it. However, it looks that that room actually has a regular floor; mine didn't. You lowered your own suspended floor (metal grill tiles) onto scaffold poles to get into the room, then tore it all up as you left. Falling off the "floor" was a Really Bad Idea; those foam pyramids have got a steel spike up the middle for rigidity, and you'd be in deep trouble if you fell onto them from 6 feet up (especially as no-one was going to hear you scream). There was a safety microphone wired to the door switch for this reason (which also meant it wasn't QUITE such a good idea to say rude things about people in there :-)
- Anechoic 14y agoHowever, it looks that that room actually has a regular floor Look carefully at the picture, he's not standing on a solid floor, he's standing on a wire frame over more absorbers. Their website has a better pic: http://www.orfieldlabs.com/Researchtour4.html http://www.orfieldlabs.com/Researchtour4.html IOW, their chamber is (fully) anechoic, not just hemi-anechoic.
- jrabone 14y agoYes, you're quite right; I thought that was a particularly ugly patterned carpet he was standing on. I think that says more about British carpets than anything else :) Looks like their wire floor is a bit more permanent than the design I was using; my microphone was on a rotating boom that could be swept 360 degrees from outside, and my sample mounting was a pole down to the real floor, so we could have the absolute minimum of interference from the mountings.
- Cushman 14y agoThe reverb room actually sounds cooler: > ...a reverberation chamber with bowed aluminum panels in which he sounds the same from 300 feet away as 3 feet away.
- Anechoic 14y agoReverb rooms are much easier to build (and more common) than very-quiet anechoic chambers.
- Cushman 14y agoOkay, but are perfectly diffuse rooms really more common than perfectly absorbent rooms? Anyway, I didn't know that before today :)
- Anechoic 14y agoPerfectly diffuse rooms are a common staple of acoustics labs in university and calibration facilities, it's a requirement for STC (sound transmission class) testing for building materials and wall/window assemblies. Any acoustically well-designed movie theater (THX or HPS-4000 certified among others), performance space, concert hall or auditorium will be decently diffuse, at least at higher frequencies.
- aangjie 14y agoBrilliant idea.. though probably bait'sy title... I would love to spend as much time as i can over there... If it's becoming annoying i can always sit down and start practicing vipassana(http://www.dhamma.org/ http://www.dhamma.org/) that would be fun to listen to only my body. :-P
- Anechoic 14y agoBTW, Ron Sauro at NWAA Labs (http://nwaalabs.com/ http://nwaalabs.com/ or http://nwaalabs.ipower.com/pictures1.html http://nwaalabs.ipower.com/pictures1.html) was hoping to build a quieter chamber but his funding dried up. He built his acoustical testing facility at a nuclear plant that was constructed but never commissioned. The original plan was to build a 50ft by 60ft by 55ft chamber, with about half of it being underground. Given the exterior noise level of around 20 dBA (the plant is located in the wilderness), the thick concrete walls of the facility, and some additional noise and structural isolation he might very well beat Orfield's record with a much larger chamber (meaning it will be anechoic down to a lower frequency). If he can get the funding. If you're ever in the area, Ron is a friendly guy and he'll be happy to give you a tour (he's on LinkedIn).
- robmiller 14y agoAgreed, I feel fortunate to have NWAA so close. Good to see you on HN, Anechoic.
- mmcnickle 14y agoThere was a small room like this at my university. It was fitted with a "panic" button, because if anything happened you in there, no one could hear you shouting.
- dzuc 14y agoWell apparently one can hear one's own circulatory and nervous system: http://theresonator.blogspot.com/2007/04/john-cage-visits-anechoic-chamber.html http://theresonator.blogspot.com/2007/04/john-cage-visits-an... > Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but as he wrote later, he "heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation."
- jsiarto 14y agoI can attest to this. We have an anechoic chamber here at Michigan State and I've also been in the testing chamber at EV (Electro-Voice). Hearing the blood in your head and ears is quite odd, but the disorientation from not being able to place yourself in space is even stranger.
- agscala 14y agoAfter reading this article, I immediately started to see if I could find one nearby and found out about the one at Michigan State. Would it be possible for me to go there and sit inside for a bit to experience this, even though I'm not a MSU student?
- artmageddon 14y agoLikewise, I'd like to try this... it seems cool as hell!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- its_so_on 14y agoI don't get why people can't spend more than 45 minutes in there. I understand that you begin to hear your heartbeat and so on, but surely anyone who is even slightly deaf (e.g. even from just prolonged listening to loud music) wouldn't hear these very low-decibel sounds? So it can't be the lack of sound, as a slightly hard of hearing person hears the noise floor drop out quite frequently. (Correct me if I'm wrong here; it's just my assumption). Is it that these sounds become so annoying, such a nuisance? If someone had a noise-free keyboard (maybe touch) and were coding in there, would anything be a distraction? Would anything limit your stay? I find sitting into a dead-silent room with a laptop (e.g. somewhere where you can't even hear a clock tick, nor any street sounds, nothing) to be completely maddening initially...but then after about 2-3 minutes you can immerse yourself and do something with extreme concentration.
- zipdog 14y agoThe 45 minutes aspect is misleading. They haven't been using the room to test that, its just that no-one has spent longer than that so far.
- its_so_on 14y agoOur title is (currently) "A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it", and the Times Herald headline is even more specific: "A room so quiet no one can stand it for more than 45 minutes." I'm wondering what it is they 'can't stand.' The article text is pretty vague. '“Your eyes don’t feel as comfortable in this room,” Orfield pointed out, adding that some visitors have had hallucinations during or after a spell in there. “You lose your touchstones.” Small wonder, then, that even Orfield spends no more than a half-hour at a time in the 99.99 percent soundproof anechoic chamber, and no one has lasted in there for more than 45 minutes.' It doesn't match either my experience or my expectation, which is why I asked about it above. If someone had a silent computer to code on in there, could they crank out code for a couple of hours without nuisance, or would something bother them? If the latter, then what exactly would bother them?
- duaneb 14y ago
- neuroelectronic 14y agoI would sleep like a baby in there.
- zaphar 14y agoI read that title and immediately thought. Challenge Accepted.
- koglerjs 14y agoI want one to meditate in each morning.
- sofal 14y agoI would love to hear what my drum set sounds like in there. Has anyone ever practiced a musical instrument in a chamber like this? I wonder what the advantages and disadvantages would be.
- camtarn 14y agoDrums sound really strange without reverb. If you've ever drummed outside, the difference is really stark - I play outside with my samba band a lot, and all the drums sound really cold and quiet, so you end up playing a lot harder automatically just to get the sound of your drum to be as loud as you're used to. I imagine the anechoic chamber might be similar, with the added effect of not hearing any drum sound which would normally bounce off the floor - do, for example, you'd probably hear very little snare wire sound.
- cgoddard 14y agoI'm curious. If you speak in an anechoic chamber like this, what does it sound (or not) like?
- thatusertwo 14y agoThere was an episode of 'Get Smart' where in order to keep the room quiet the words people spoke turned into word clouds. Eventually the room was so full they had to eat their words. This article reminded me of that.
- shriphani 14y agoHere is a video of the effects in an anechoic chamber : http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/CampusTours/Microsoft-Campus-Tours-Microsoft-Research-Part-1-The-Anechoic-Chamber http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/CampusTours/Microsoft-Campus...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- squidsquidsquid 14y agoI've been in the Orfield labs anechoic chamber. I didn't feel too disturbed, but then I never got the chance to be in there alone -- some friends and I went together. Steve's a great guy. He'll give you a little tour of everything going on at Orfield labs, but the price of admission is a $20 check to a local food-bank. He told my friends and I a lot of interesting things. Like how corporate offices use subtle noise from the air-ducts to drown out coworkers' conversations; or how casinos use echoing plates to project the sound of a jackpot across the entire gaming floor. I definitely recommend paying it a visit if you ever find yourself in Minneapolis.
- teeja 14y agoI enjoyed a similar experience sitting in the middle of a mile-on-a-side clearcut area on a windless, zero-degree Sunday in January in the far north. No planes, no traffic, no animal noises. I sat on a frozen log and listened to the blood in my ears for a half hour. Give me a good book and I'll spend 45 hours in one.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cpenner461 14y agoThe closest I think I've come to anything like this is a "soundproof" booth used for hearing tests. I remember that being eerily quiet (to listen for very quiet tones in headphones). Anyone know how this chamber compares to a hearing test booth? Sounds like it's probably quite a bit quieter...
- Mesmoria 14y agoI wonder how this would equate to being in space (preferably in a space suit) ?
- johnchristopher 14y agoI have tinnitus and I often wonder how I would feel in such an environment and what the whistling in my ears would sound like.