4 ms·
I cannot speak to partial deafness, but I used to work in an anechoic chamber. It is indeed soul-suckingly disturbing after short periods of time. Even a tota
by SeanLuke 14y ago
I cannot speak to partial deafness, but I used to work in an anechoic chamber. It is indeed soul-suckingly disturbing after short periods of time. Even a totally "silent" environment has tremendous amounts of reverb and low-level reflected noise: you just filter it out automatically. In an anechoic chamber, this noise is gone, and your filter goes haywire. It starts filtering things that aren't there. You start hearing your own blood vessels in your eardrum, yes, but you also perceive a kind of disturbing anti-noise. It's very hard to describe.
Top it off with the fact that usually such rooms are entirely sealed off and that you're standing or sitting on a big mesh trampoline floating in the center of the room, and it all comes to one seriously creepy experience after about ten minutes.
- terangdom 14y agoHow does it compare to using earplugs in a silent room?
- raverbashing 14y agoI must assume it's quite different Even though some of the sound travels through the facial bone structure (like when you hear your own voice) I guess most sounds come from outside Also, earplugs add pressure to the ear canal so I guess this muffles somethings
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- silentbicycle 14y agoHow does it compare to an isolation tank?
- SeanLuke 14y agoIn comparison, isolation tanks are extremely noisy. You got to try an anechoic chamber to believe it. BTW: many universities have one. The one I worked at (BYU, long ago) has this one: http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/acoustics/facilities.aspx http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/acoustics/facilities.asp... http://vimeo.com/15855229 http://vimeo.com/15855229 (a corny advertisement, but shows the room well) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PGF_cGS8ts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PGF_cGS8ts It's a very good facility. Interestingly, I believe the main anechoic chamber used to be an echo chamber!
- silentbicycle 14y agoThanks!
- Timst 14y agoHuh, the vimeo one is weird. I'd think we wouldn't be able to hear them talk, let alone move boxes (at around the 1:00 mark).
- SeanLuke 14y agoOf course you can hear sounds: but you can only hear direct sounds. All reflected sounds are gone. And that's actually a high percentage of the sounds you normally hear. An anechoic chamber is used to test acoustics in an environment with absolutely no reflection (reverb, echo, etc.).
- caf 14y agoNobody tell the State Department - it'll be the new waterboarding.
- sidww2 14y agoSensory deprivation has already been used as a form of torture by the US. See the case of Jose Padilla for instance.