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 here; it's just my assumption). Is it that these sounds become so annoying, such a nuisance?
If someone had a noise-free keyboard (maybe touch) and were coding in there, would anything be a distraction? Would anything limit your stay?
I find sitting into a dead-silent room with a laptop (e.g. somewhere where you can't even hear a clock tick, nor any street sounds, nothing) to be completely maddening initially...but then after about 2-3 minutes you can immerse yourself and do something with extreme concentration.
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.
Of 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.).
Our title is (currently) "A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it", and the Times Herald headline is even more specific: "A room so quiet no one can stand it for more than 45 minutes."
I'm wondering what it is they 'can't stand.' The article text is pretty vague.
'“Your eyes don’t feel as comfortable in this room,” Orfield pointed out, adding that some visitors have had hallucinations during or after a spell in there. “You lose your touchstones.”
Small wonder, then, that even Orfield spends no more than a half-hour at a time in the 99.99 percent soundproof anechoic chamber, and no one has lasted in there for more than 45 minutes.'
It doesn't match either my experience or my expectation, which is why I asked about it above. If someone had a silent computer to code on in there, could they crank out code for a couple of hours without nuisance, or would something bother them? If the latter, then what exactly would bother them?
> If someone had a silent computer to code on in there, could they crank out code for a couple of hours without nuisance, or would something bother them? If the latter, then what exactly would bother them?
First of all, I'm seriously disappointed I can't test this because no computer is quiet enough. Second of all, I can't stand working in sound-proofed rooms. I much prefer working in an environment with (non-distracting) ambient sounds.
Look, the "45 minutes" thing is total clickbait. I've been in an anechoic chamber and it is a little disconcerting and weird to suddenly find yourself hearing nothing at all. I only spent a few minutes in there, and it's not uncomfortable at first, but it feels good to get out. It's basically just a feeling of disorientation.
But I have no doubt that, properly motivated, you could easily spend an hour in there. Hell, if I had access to one I'd go do it right now just for dumb internet bragging rights.
I've been in an anechoic chamber ... and it's not uncomfortable at first, but it feels good to get out
Not all anechoic chambers are equal, and not all anechoic chambers are necessarily quiet - they're only as quiet as they need to be for whatever it's designed to test (an anechoic chamber designed to test ICE equipment might have background noise levels in the 40-50 dBA range), so be careful about extrapolating your experience to the quietest anechoic chamber in the world.
I think zipdog hit it on the head, and it's the PR-spin that turns it into seeming untested, unproven "no one can stand" bit.
Have they had open competitions? I feel relatively certain that people would endure in there effectively indefinitely: People can tolerate remarkable things.
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 here; it's just my assumption). Is it that these sounds become so annoying, such a nuisance?
If someone had a noise-free keyboard (maybe touch) and were coding in there, would anything be a distraction? Would anything limit your stay?
I find sitting into a dead-silent room with a laptop (e.g. somewhere where you can't even hear a clock tick, nor any street sounds, nothing) to be completely maddening initially...but then after about 2-3 minutes you can immerse yourself and do something with extreme concentration.