How Many Of Us,

have asked, at times, for some peace and quiet?

photograph Microsoft, but be carful what you wish for, total peace and quiet can drive you mad! or at least hallucinate and make you fall over, above is Microsoft’s Audio Lab which holds the Guinness record for the world’s quietest room, rooms like these are called anechoic chamber, there are only a few of them in the whole world and the absolute quietest of them all is inside the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Virginia. Rated at -20.35 dBA, this room stops all outside noise, making any sound produced inside of it made by you, “As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe,” Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist, and the designer of Microsoft’s anechoic chamber, told CNN. “Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very faint sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud.”

“The longest continuous time anyone has spent inside the chamber is about 55 minutes,” Gopal said. “I have noticed that there are several folks who can stay inside for 30 minutes or so. But others have asked to go out within the first few seconds.” Apparently you can clearly hear your internal organs, which is not the most pleasant sensation in the world, and experiencing the quietest room in the world is even scarier with the light off, because you literally need to stay put, since the absence of sound causes people to lose their balance, unfortunately the world’s quietest room is not open to the public. It is used by the tech giant to test a variety of audio gadgets, like microphones, receivers, and speakers, and to test the clicks and hums of other computing devices, but, and here is the good news, the former world’s quietest room, an anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs in Minneapolis is actually open to the public, just remember no fizzy drinks before entering!