Inside the quietest place on Earth | Hacker News Reader

Inside the quietest place on Earth

bbc.com

122 pointsuptown45 comments

I had the chance to tour this room and it is a pretty cool experience. It's not like it's completely silent - when you speak or make noise you can hear it, but there are no echoes and everything is just kind of muffled. You hear the sound and then it quickly disappears, very similar to how you hear when your ears are pressurized right after take of. It's like taking the flavor out of voices, or making a picture/video dull.

The coolest part was when they turned the lights off and locked the door. The only thing you hear then is the awkward movements of other people as they make noise just to make sure they still... exist.

I remember visiting the Caverns of Sonora in Texas. At the lowest point, the tour guide turns off the light for the group to experience what the cavern is like - dark, with the occasional drip of water. The odd thing was that the group I was with was pretty quiet until the lights went out... and then they went berserk with chatter. It didn't seem to be out of a sense of disquiet in the dark though, but had more a sort of "teacher's not looking" feel to it.

I have had similar experiences while exploring caverns in the Ardennes in Belgium. This was actually late eighties, so not as prevalent with smartphones.

The tour guide said all the guides had a running bet which group could stand the longest being in total darkness without using watches/torches/lighters to create some resemblance of light. "Never had a single group last over 5 minutes".

They probably also had that "bet" to be able to give their groups a reason not to immediately turn on a light in the dark. It's very distracting and ruins the experience.

On a smaller scale I see inexperienced campers seem to be dependent on using a flashlight for EVERYTHING when the sun goes down, even when just sitting doing nothing, or performing a task (like walking in a field) that could be done by moonlight.

We have to train this instinct out of ourselves.

It's also just reinforced by biology. Use a flashlight once or twice and until your night vision recovers if you need to do something else your eyes aren't ready to so you need to use the light again... repeat all night.

Red lights work rather well in cases like that.

True but that's not a standard feature for cheap lights or headlamps.

At Mammoth Cave in Kentucky they turn off the lights on every tour. On one tour, my guide turned off the lights and seemed to lose track of time. He started talking about different things, meandering into other topics, without turning the lights back on. It lasted 9 minutes, according to my watch.

The first couple minutes were nothing special, and I was still fully aware of the group of people around me. After a few minutes I noticed a faint light. I don't know if it was a distant tour light around the corner, or if I was hallucinating. I spent a couple minutes looking and trying to figure it out. Around that point I became really uncomfortable, and my heart rate increased as it went on.

My natural reaction would be to close my eyes - if they're closed then surely I'll be immune from the effects of darkness. But this actually increased my anxiety. When it's pitch black there's no visible difference between having your eyes open or closed. It feels like your eyelids aren't working, like the muscle movements are not happening.

It caused a retreat into my own mind. Despite there being twenty people nearby, I felt like they weren't real. It didn't help that the group was quiet, with only occasional shuffles and murmurs coming from them. I started to think they could all walk off, leaving only me and the rambling tour guide. I had a strong urge to light up my watch or phone, but I didn't want to be "that guy". My eyes felt like they ceased to exist.

By the last couple minutes I stopped pondering and noticing things, and started waiting for the guide to turn the lights back on. I think the rest of the group was going through the same thing, judging by their silence. I was surprised at how quickly things returned to normal after they came back on. I had felt like I was near a breaking point of some sort, but within seconds I was fine.

>The coolest part was when they turned the lights off and locked the door.

I'm slightly concerned that the door has a lock in the first place.

Was it locked from the inside or outside? I can see the latter being consistent with Microsoft's style. :)

>Was it locked from the inside or outside?

I maintain this is a legitimate question.

Probably both. Locks are to keep honest employees from having sex in your anechoic chamber.

> They are looking for tiny vibrations that are produced by capacitors on electronic circuit boards as current passes through them. These can make the components on the board produce annoying hums that can be off-putting for consumers.

I'm so glad to hear Microsoft is taking that serious. Do you still remember the humming capacitors of the very first MacBook? Awful. Or the ones we still get nowadays in USB power supplies and other cheap gadgets?

I've heard such noises before on my PalmPilot Professional. In a quiet room, I can hear a distinct hissing sound when I turned it on.

Capacitors can also play music apparently. During audio testing of a speaker system in my company, I could distinctly hear music coming from a speaker board with no speakers attached. It turns out I was hearing the audio generated by the capacitors on the board.

I've got an ASUS board P8Z68 Deluxe that sings like you wouldn't believe. Drives me nuts, I just wish I could silence - but I suspect that would require new caps...

Or just pour generously with hot glue on top of suspected caps.

I think the coils are making the noise not the capacitors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coil_noise

It's often both. Capacitors also have a capacity (hah!) for making noise. Coils generally get it first since they are a more straightforward electromagnetic device.

Ceramic capacitors still make noise (and can pickup noise) thanks to the piezoelectric effect. Coils typically make more noise though.

Almost everything starts to make noises at higher currents (e.g. CPU voltage regulator). You have of course coils making noise, you have ceramic capacitors making noise to due piezoelectricity, even good old fashioned electrolyte caps can make noises and transistors buzz due to thermal expansion of the die under switching stress. Not in computers, but even batteries, cables and bus bars make noises under pulse current loads, as do film capacitors (used in high power snubbers).

In the case of capacitors it also goes the other way; tapping a capacitor induces voltage spikes which can disturb analogue signals.

( the last part is an actual reason to isolate amplifiers from speaker systems. Not usually worth it aside from the very high-end. Not as much effect as isolating a turntable for sure, but theoretically it should make a difference. )

My combination of gigabyte f2a78m-ds2 and AMD A8-7600 has a hum that I can listen to how hard the gpu is working as I scroll through a web page. Thankfully our MSI boards do not make a noise.

I've got a sony laptop that I can hear scrolling through the audio; it's kind of a bummer to hear these buzzes and digital groans.

"A small number of people feel dizzy."

Reports of this from other similar chambers convinced me of the importance of audio in VR. I've noticed first-hand how it's possible to hear how close to a wall you are when walking down a large hallway. Apparently, we all hear walls, floors and ceilings all the time and it plays into our balance. Other chambers have reported people losing balance and falling over as a side effect of being in a room with no echoes.

Aye. While in university, I spent lots of time in the antenna lab (which doubled as an anechoic chamber.).

Even hours and hours of exposure couldn't help me get my bearings; I became dizzy within seconds and, on some occasions, even felt like I was about to barf.

Luckily I didn't fall over - 'our' chamber didn't have a wire floor like the Microsoft one - just a narrow walkway into the center of the room where there was a pod for installing whatever gear you were about to test.

Falling onto those tiles would probably cost someone a fortune. (I've got no idea what anechoic tiles cost, but I know they are rather brittle. Don't ask me how I know.)

I was working at the local uni for a while. There was a long, narrow corridor that had a large pinboard made of something very sound-absorbing material that was popular for a while. The other side was brick with doors here and there. Every time I walked past the pinboard, I felt like I was leaning towards it. Seems we have some similar skills like bats, we just don't realize we use it all the time until something changes.

Background hum: For Europeans who come to the US - do you notice a difference in the hum produced by electrical equipment? Because you may be used to fans, transformers, etc. running at 50Hz vs. 60 Hz in the US, and that's in the audible range.

I was a co-op student at nortel networks in the 90's. They had an anechoic chamber used for testing telephones. I remember the lightbulb hanging from the cieling sounded like a swarm of bees.

At least in movies I can hear the difference but I think it goes unnoticed by most people because nobody pays attention to something like that. Unless I consciously pay attention, I don't notice it either, maybe just watching to many Holywood movies, maybe there is a difference between movies and reality.

I love the part about the person who sat in there for an hour to raise money for charity. Not running X miles or anything like that, sitting in a room for an hour. That says a lot.

I have pretty serious tinnitus, to the point where I actually need ambient noise of some sort to sleep (not quite to the level of leaving the TV on, but a fan or some traffic).

I don't think I could spend long in that chamber at all.

Every day or so I get a quick pitch. To fix it, I put the pads of my thumbs on my ears (with my fingers pointing backwards) and then rotate upwards while lightly pressing. I couldn't imagine living with that full time, or even on a regular basis.

Have you found anything to temporarily relieve this (diet, movements, etc)?

Can't speak for the parent, obviously, but mine is constant, although at times peaking a bit too much for comfort. Impervious to anything I've thrown at it over the years. You sort of get used to the damn thing, but you never loose awareness of it. Those more or less sinusoidal 8 kHz have been droning in my right ear for about a decade now.

I had some tinnitus (unknown origin) for a week or so many years back. It really taught me the importance of protecting my hearing. I feel really lucky I got to experience it temporarily at just that point in my life where I was young enough that it wasn't too late, yet mature enough to realize how serious it could have been.

yeah, you're lucky it went away.

I used to do most of my work within the music industry, which meant going to a lot of shows. Early on I started wearing earplugs. The odd time someone would give me slack for it, but something as fragile and important as your hearing is worth pulling out all of the stops to protect.

I was at this hardcore show a few years ago that was so loud that my earplugs weren't even enough. When I adjusted them, I heard the raw volume of the show --- I'm surprised my head didn't explode.

I do what I can to keep my weight down (lots of fruit, veg, fish), exercise regularly (nothing excessive) and take an aspirin each day. It's kept my blood pressure down and alleviated the tinnitus to a level where it's hardly noticeable.

I don't know whether there have been any studies to link high blood pressure with tinnitus but, for me at least, there is some correlation.

For me I don't really notice it if there's any other background noise, it just sort of blends in with it, it's only in quiet environments or when I think about it that it becomes intrusive.

Drugs and alcohol tend to alleviate it, but that's not really a solution to the problem.

I was here just three weeks ago. It's not an ideal deprivation experience as much as it is an optimal acoustic testing lab, especially considering the vibrations you experience from trying to stay still on the lattice floor (see picture 3: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT47Lluje03/).

Fittingly, the serial number field on the door leading to the room was blank. Not needed for the only one of its kind, I suppose.

I've always wanted to try one of these out since hearing about them a few years ago. Does anyone know of anechoic chambers that people can tour, specifically in the Bay Area?

A high end foley room would probably get you 98% of the way there.

Recording spaces in general are a good (though very incomplete) starting point. My office, where I do a decent amount of AV recording, has about 60% coverage of acoustic foam and standing silently in the dead corner (2" wedge foam from floor to ceiling around a bass trap) makes people visibly uncomfortable.

Many TV or radio studios have chambers like this, they sometimes use them to produce recordings that sound like they were recorded outside (adding the background noises they desire). Not sure if that's available in the Bay area though.

I'd be really curious to go into that room. I have tinnitus, and I'm wondering what I'd actually hear if that was the only sound around.

Cool. But have been around a while. I had the good luck to go inside the one at Murray Hill that was built in 1940.

https://www.bell-labs.com/anechoic-chamber/

In you are after this experience and cannot find an anechoic chamber nearby, an EMC test lab might also work - they usually have a room where walls are covered with radiation absorbent material, which incidentally also absorbs sound very well.

I really would like to do Zazen in that room.

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