The World's Quietest Room

Scientists at Minneapolis’ Orfield Labs created their own soundless room, an anechoic chamber. Their studies have found that when putting subjects within the chamber, they begin to hallucinate within 30 minutes.

 

With an average quiet room having a sound level of 30 decibels, the anechoic chamber’s sound level is -9 decibels. The ceiling, floor, and walls of the chamber absorb sound rather than have it bounce off as normal objects do. The chamber is so quiet that the subjects can even hear their own organs functioning.

Although extremely interesting, the experience is rather unpleasant. Not one subject has spent more than 45 minutes in the chamber alone. Leaving a person to only their thoughts, the chamber could drive them insane.

 

*anyone wanna contact matmos?

I've heard about this room and it's hilarious how human beings can't handle it.

 

 

I'd hate to hear how bad my tinnitus is in absolute silence.

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:28 PM, Nebraska said:

With an average quiet room having a sound level of 30 decibels, the anechoic chamber’s sound level is -9 decibels

Woah, how do decibels go below zero (well aside from in the digital recording/headroom use of the term) - I always thought 0 meant absolutely no sounds whatsoever. That's a lot of less-than (nulls) !

Most iDM 2014

first thing i thought was about tinnitus as well lol. i don't think i'd last too long.

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:38 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:28 PM, Nebraska said:

With an average quiet room having a sound level of 30 decibels, the anechoic chamber’s sound level is -9 decibels

Woah, how do decibels go below zero (well aside from in the digital recording/headroom use of the term) - I always thought 0 meant absolutely no sounds whatsoever. That's a lot of less-than (nulls) !

 

 

i understand decibels are a relative unit of measurement, but not sure what the math is behind it. is there even an absolute measure of sound?

that sounds really overstated...would love to try it out!

lock me up in there for a day. I want to see me break in the silence.

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:34 PM, LimpyLoo said:

I've heard about this room and it's hilarious how human beings can't handle it.

 

 

I'd hate to hear how bad my tinnitus is in absolute silence.

 

in that room, you will constantly hear the beating of your own heart

 

that's enough to get me into an existential frenzy

 

 

i think i'd rather hear tinnitus

this room sounds pretty amazon. if anything was going to make me go anxiously insane with auditory hallucinations in there, it'd probably be my heart arrhythmia. whenever i concentrate on it i start to feel like my heart cells are just teetering on the edge of complete chaos.. if that was the only thing i could hear i'm not sure i'd be able to move my mind anywhere else.

 

re: 0 dB, as i understand it that's when the relative sound pressure at which the pressure of the environment you're in exactly matches the "standard pressure" (something in the micro-pascal range i think), so that when you take the log of the ratio of those two sound pressures you get 1/1 and since log 1 = 0 you get "0 dB." so err, i guess negative decibels just means you're in a place that is below the relative "just barely audible" standard used to measure sound pressure. (i am remembering this from class so might have gotten it wrong)

Edited March 28, 2013 by luke viia

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:00 PM, triachus said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:34 PM, LimpyLoo said:

I've heard about this room and it's hilarious how human beings can't handle it.

 

 

I'd hate to hear how bad my tinnitus is in absolute silence.

 

i think i'd rather hear tinnitus

 

 

 

I have a heart murmur so I wouldn't be too keen on listening to that

 

 

But tinnitus is the sound of degeneration and death

 

 

That would get me worse I think

Here's an explanation:

 

  Quote

dBFS - dB Full Scale

0 dBFS represents the highest possible level in digital gear. All other measurements expressed in terms of dBFS will always be less than 0 dB (negative numbers).
0 dBFS indicates the digital number with all digits ="1", the highest possible sample.
The lowest possible sample is (for instance for 16 bit audio):
0000 0000 0000 0001, which equals -96 dBFS. Therefore the dynamic range for 16-bit systems is 96 dB. For 20-bit digital audio it is 120 dB. For 24 bit digital audio it is 144 dB.

Full-scale input level is the analog input voltage level that will cause the A/D converter to just equal full scale with no clipping on either positive or negative peaks.

Output full scale is defined as the analog output voltage produced while playing a 997 Hz digital full-scale sine wave, assuming the THD+N is less than -40 dB relative to the signal level.

The dynamic range of a digital system is the ratio of the full scale signal level to the RMS noise floor.

That's the digital reference for decibels though, not the ... erm whatever this one is !

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:11 PM, mcbpete said:

That's the digital reference for decibels though, not the ... erm whatever this one is !

 

There are a handful of different scales used for different measurement purposes.

Wasn't there an Aphex Twin article about him spending time in such a chamber?

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:44 PM, Joyrex said:

Wasn't there an Aphex Twin article about him spending time in such a chamber?

no that was venetian snares spending time in a fart chamber

It sounds like they're measuring in dBV, although I'm not sure why...

They should be measuring in SPL since it's perceived loudness...

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:44 PM, Joyrex said:

Wasn't there an Aphex Twin article about him spending time in such a chamber?

 

 

I think you are mistaking him with John Cage. After he went in such a chamber, he began developing his theories about silence and music and whatnot.

 

 

Or, Aphex Twin read the Cage story and thought it would be fun to bullshit about that in an interview, as we is wont to do.

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:47 PM, beariksson said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:44 PM, Joyrex said:

Wasn't there an Aphex Twin article about him spending time in such a chamber?

 

no that was venetian snares spending time in a fart chamber

 

Oh...

 

That's probably why his music is so bad.

Edited March 28, 2013 by Ceerial

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:52 PM, triachus said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:44 PM, Joyrex said:

Wasn't there an Aphex Twin article about him spending time in such a chamber?

 

 

I think you are mistaking him with John Cage. After he went in such a chamber, he began developing his theories about silence and music and whatnot.

 

 

Or, Aphex Twin read the Cage story and thought it would be fun to bullshit about that in an interview, as we is wont to do.

 

  Quote

"In 1948, Cage joined the faculty of Black Mountain College, where he regularly worked on collaborations with Merce Cunningham. Around this time, he visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University (an anechoic chamber is a room designed in such a way that the walls, ceiling and floor will absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than bouncing them back as echoes. They are also generally soundproofed.) 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." Cage had gone to a place where he expected there to be no sound, and yet sound was nevertheless discernible. He stated "until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music." - wikipedia

i don't want to contact matmos because they would do some generic ghostbusters esque 70s parapsychology shit with a bunch of bald dudes who kissed their ass to get on the album and not appreciate the sensory deprivation aspect of it in and of itself.

when they say hallucinations i'm assuming they're referring to auditory hallucinations only. I've only spent 20 minutes in one and i got nothing like that. An iso/float tank seems like it would be a lot more effective since you would get tactile, audio and visual hallucinations from over an hour of floating.

Edited March 28, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:05 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 7:00 PM, triachus said:

 

  On 3/28/2013 at 6:34 PM, LimpyLoo said:

I've heard about this room and it's hilarious how human beings can't handle it.

 

 

I'd hate to hear how bad my tinnitus is in absolute silence.

 

i think i'd rather hear tinnitus

 

 

 

I have a heart murmur so I wouldn't be too keen on listening to that

 

 

But tinnitus is the sound of degeneration and death

 

 

That would get me worse I think

 

I live very near to this lab, I've been wanting to go and experience it for quite some time now, for almost exactly those reasons. I've had tinnitus pretty much since I was born and mine is pretty much constant. I'm really curious to try it and see if the perceived tones in my ears change at all in this total silence or other ways it may effect it. They say no one has ever spent more than 15 minutes in the chamber at one time. The problem is it's not exactly open to the public... You can get tours but I hear they have to be pre-arranged and usually through a school or university, or you have to have some kind of academic support and reason... I have been wondering though if I wrote up a hypothesis, got it backed by a local audio engineering professor who is a friend of mine and presented it as the basis for a research paper if I could get cleared. I may have to try pursuing this sometime this summer.

  On 3/28/2013 at 8:16 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

i don't want to contact matmos because they would do some generic ghostbusters esque 70s parapsychology shit with it and not appreciate the sensory deprivation aspect of it in and of itself.

 

 

You know they don't really believe in that shit, right?

 

 

Matmos is awesome.

 

 

 

WATMM, why do you hate all of my favorite music?

what do you mean? Their entire concept for the last EP and LP were about the band members trying to convey concepts using psychic vibrations while using the ganzfeld effect. If they don't believe it they made a pretty strong point to present it as if they did. Either way to me its a shame that once again ganzfeld is associated with junk science and not purely as the powerful form of hallucinatory inducing sensory deprivation it is. So once again, don't call matmos they'll just fuck it up. I really enjoy Matmos, but i think their last album was not very good. I can think that right without 'hating' your favorite music?

Edited March 28, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

  On 3/28/2013 at 8:20 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

what do you mean? Their entire concept for the last EP and LP were about the band members trying to convey concepts using psychic vibrations while using the ganzfeld effect. If they don't believe it they made a pretty strong point to present it as if they did. Either way to me its a shame that once again ganzfeld is associated with junk science and not purely as the powerful form of hallucinatory inducing sensory deprivation it is. So once again, don't call matmos they'll just fuck it up.

 

Yeah and Legowelt performs black magic rituals before making choons but it's all just a pisstake.

 

Mysticism is awesome, especially in music.

 

You can tell in interviews that they don't actually believe in ESP, that it was just a fun concept to get interesting results (like all of their music). They are reluctant to say what they believe one way or other but their constant references to "fun" and the dubiousness of their intentions (e.g. “I liked the idea that there was simultaneously total honesty about what we did but also this kind of hard kernel which was obscured") points to this all being

.

I mean i'm cool with quasi mysticism whatever in music, that's fine. I just feel that Ganzfeld is a very important concept to me and it's a shame that a lot of people have heard about it in regards to the paranormal once again instead of the actual very powerful nature of it being a form of hallucination inducing sensory deprivation. That's all im complaining about.