World's Quietest Room

The Anechoic Chamber - world's quietest room that absorbs all sound. The room is located in Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis.

The recording studios where "Funkytown", a 1980 disco hit song by the band Lipps Inc., and Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" were recorded are also in this building.

A typical quiet room you sleep in at night measures about 30 decibels. A normal conversation is about 60 decibels. This room has been measured at -9 decibels, the Minnesota Public Radio reported.

Orfield Labs uses the room to test products, including switches that go on car dashboards and the sound an LED display makes on a cell phone to make sure they're not too loud.

To get into the Anechoic Chamber, which holds a Guinness World Record, you go through two bank vault-like doors. The floor in the room is mesh like a trampoline so there's nothing on the floor for the sound to bounce off of. The walls are lined with sound-proofing wedges that are a meter long so they absorb the sound.

"When you sit in any rooms a person normally sits in, you hear the sound and all its reflections," said Steven Orfield, president of Orfield Labs.

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"When you go into an Anechoic Chamber, there are zero reflections. So if you listen to me talk and hear my voice, you're hearing my voice exactly. And if I turn around and talk, the only thing you'll hear is the sound bending around my head," the Minnesota radio quoted him as saying.

Source-IANS