The Microsoft Quiet Room: Silence, sensory deprivation rattles brains...Deafening stomach gurgles, audible breathing disturbs...
Inside the
quietest room in the world: Microsoft reveals the $1.5m ‘chamber of silence’ it
uses to tune everything from headphones to the click of your mouse button -
that's so quiet no one has been able to spend more than 45 minutes inside
·
Microsoft spent $1.5m
building quietest place on Earth at its Redmond campus
·
Small room
is housed within six concrete layers on vibration damping springs
·
Walls,
floor, ceiling are covered in giant wedges of fiberglass foam to stop echo
·
It's so
quiet that nobody has been able to spend more than 45 minutes
inside
·
Deep within Microsoft’s Redmond campus is the quietest
place on the planet – and Dailymail.com was able to step inside.
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.
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· Known as an anechoic chamber, it is a small
room measuring 21ft (6.36m) in each direction. It is designed to be as
perfectly quiet as possible, to allow engineers to tune audio devices and sound
in perfect conditions
HOW
MICROSOFT BUILT THE QUIETEST PLACE ON EARTH
Known as an anechoic chamber, the small room measures
just 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.
The world record attempt measured the room at -20.3
decibels.
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.
‘People can’t handle it, it rattles their brains, it’s
sensory deprivation.’
Gopal said the record for staying in the room, recognized
by the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest on Earth, is short.
‘This is the quietest place on the planet, and the most
someone has been able to stay in is 45 minutes.’
‘Just the chamber cost us $1.5m, which shows you how
serious we are about audio.’
Known as an anechoic chamber, it is a small room
measuring 21ft (6.36m) in each direction.
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WHAT IT’S
REALLY LIKE INSIDE THE WORLD’S QUIETEST ROOM
Before entering the room, I was warned to expect my guide
to sound different. Once inside, it’s an incredible change - voices sound
flat and even the tiniest sound is amplified.
However, nothing quite prepares you for the moment the
lights go out, and the massive door shuts, leaving you inside the quietest room
on Earth in complete darkness.
It’s incredibly disorientating.
Suddenly the sound of your own breathing, and that of
anyone nearby, is incredibly loud.
Even brushing your shirt creates a seemingly loud noise,
and the tiniest internal sound - from a stomach gurgle to the creak of a joint
as you move, is intensified to an uncomfortable level.
The pitch blackness and the total silence combine to form
a brutal sensory deprivation that is a completely alien, and uncomfortable,
environment.
I found I was hyper-aware of even the tiniest sound, and
aware of my own body sounds - an unnerving experience.
It’s also a very strange experience to leave, and takes a
few minutes to adjust to the cacophony of background sound we live with every
day.
t
is designed to be as perfectly quiet as possible, to allow engineers to tune
audio devices and sound in perfect conditions.
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.
‘We work with engineers on everything from mouse clicks
to the sound your laptop makes when the latch closes, those sounds are very
important to us.
‘We obsess over this minutiae other companies
ignore. We have seven sound chambers in this building, and over 25 in the
company.'
Chris Kujawski, Principal Designer in
Microsoft’s Device Team, said the audio chamber was crucial to the firm’s
hardware, said it showed ‘the level of craftsmanship and nuance in our products
very few people know about.’
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