Microsoft Headquarters House World's Quietest Room, Here's What You'll Hear

All of us love some peace and quiet. However, too much of anything can make us feel weird. In the year 2015, tech giant Microsoft constructed the world's quietest room. Although it may seem like a meditative bliss, only a few people can endure spending a long period in this space. The room, known as the anechoic chamber, is located in the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US. It took two years to build the room and it is completely soundproof from outside noise and any internal noise is completely silenced.

It was registered as the "world's quietest place" in Guinness World Records in 2015 and "ultra-sensitive tests" performed presented the average background noise reading of -20.35 decibels. 

As per CNN, only a few people have been able to endure spending more than an hour in the room. A person starts hearing their own heartbeat in a short span of time. A while later, they can even hear their blood rushing and bones crunching. The anechoic chamber's purpose is to exclude all outside noise so that one may focus solely on the sounds produced by their own body. 

Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist and the principal designer of the anechoic chamber at Microsoft, said in an email, as quoted by the outlet, "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."

As per the outlet, our ears are always exposed to some level of sound and there is always some air pressure on the ear drums. However, when a person enters the anechoic room, the constant air pressure disappears because there are no sound reflections from the surrounding walls. The complete and absolute quiet eventually gives way to an intolerable ringing in the ears because there is no sound coming in from the outer world.

The room has an onion-like construction that isolates it from the rest of the building and the outside world in order to create absolute stillness. It is constructed of six layers of concrete and steel. To stop sound waves from reflecting back into the space, fibreglass wedges are put inside the walls, ceiling and floor. The floor is a grid of dangling cables that absorb sound.

It is to be noted that these chambers are typically utilised in order to test noises and sounds from a variety of items with a high level of scientific dependability. Microsoft utilises it to analyse clicks and hums from devices including keyboards, mouse, fans, and backlight modules on touch panels and displays, as well as audio equipment like microphones, receivers, headphones and speakers.

The Surface tablet line, Xbox gaming system and HoloLens virtual reality headset are a few devices and softwares including Skype and Cortana virtual assistant that have benefited from the chamber.