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A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

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Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#81

Post by jakejake »

Anechoic wrote: post #8
bandy wrote: post #3

I'm sure many people could, starting with the Deaf. I'd certainly enjoy a break from the incessant yammering of humanity.

I'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 After about 15 minutes I wound up opening a window to let a little wind noise into the…

I 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.

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#82

Post by cpenner461 »

The 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...

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#83

Post by teeja »

I 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.

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#84

Post by X-Istence »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #67
dsirijus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite - hence, 'quiet room'.

How do you hear your heartbeat if you can cannot hear your keyboard keys when pressed?

Because the veins are very near your ear canal. Any outside sound is not available, so the only sound you hear is those that are internal and wouldn't get very far anywhere else...

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#85

Post by robmiller »

Anechoic wrote: post #26

BTW, Ron Sauro at NWAA Labs ( http://nwaalabs.com/ or 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 (…

Agreed, I feel fortunate to have NWAA so close. Good to see you on HN, Anechoic.

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#87

Post by sirclueless »

Anechoic wrote: post #28
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn'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.

It'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.

EM waves are transverse (they oscillate perpendicular to their direction of motion) and sound waves are longitudinal (they oscillate in the same direction as they move).

There are some mathematical differences between transverse and longitudinal waves, so it's not just the same math with a different medium.

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#89

Post by nodrama »

eru wrote: post #73
nodrama wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Big 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.)

yes. That's why I said you will also be taxed if you attract traffic in a congested area.

Re: A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it

#90

Post by caf »

SeanLuke wrote: post #53
its_so_on wrote: post #37

I 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 he…

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 heari…

Nobody tell the State Department - it'll be the new waterboarding.
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