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World's Quietest Room, world record in Redmond, Washington

June 6, 2024

Redmond, Washington, United States--The tech giant Microsoft constructed the world's quietest room; known as the anechoic chamber, it is located in the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US; ultra-sensitive tests performed presented the average background noise reading of -20.35 decibels, which is the world record for the World's Quietest Room, according to the WORLD RECORD ACADEMY.

"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 NDTV says.

"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 silence. 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."

"In this room at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, all sound from the outside world is locked out and any sound produced inside is stopped cold. It’s called an “anechoic” chamber, because it creates no echo at all – which makes the sound of clapping hands downright eerie," the CNN says.

"The background noise in the room is so low that it approaches the lowest threshold theorized by mathematicians, the absolute zero of sound – the next step down is a vacuum, or the absence of sound.

"To achieve extreme silence, the room is designed with an onion-like structure that isolates it from the rest of the building and the outside world. It’s made of six layers of concrete and steel and it is somewhat disconnected from the surrounding building, because it sits atop an array of vibration damping springs. Inside, fiberglass wedges are mounted on the floor, ceiling and walls to break up sound waves before they have a chance to bounce back into the room. The floor itself is simply a grid of sound-absorbing suspended cables."

"Known as the anechoic chamber at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, “ultra-sensitive tests” performed in 2015 gave an average background noise reading of -20.35 dBA (decibels A-weighted — a measurement of the sound pressure level)," the New York Post says.

"After a few minutes, you’ll already start to hear your own heartbeat. A few minutes after that, you can hear your own bones grinding and blood flowing. The point of the anechoic chamber isn’t that you will hear nothing, but that it will remove all other outside noise and allow you to hear the endless sounds of your own body.

"Environments we think of as ultra-quiet are typically louder than the human hearing threshold, which is around 0 decibels. A library reading room, for instance, might chalk up around 40 decibels. With no sound from the outside world coming in, the total and utter silence will gradually turn into an unbearable ringing in your ears."

"In literal sense, being in a quiet place helps us to hear even the slightest sound or vibration. While we struggle to find peace and silence in today’s busy world, there is a unique place in the United States where one can be in complete pin-drop silence. This place is actually a room situated in Microsoft’s Washington headquarters and is said to be the world’s quietest room," the Firstpost.com says.

"Taking around two years to build the room called the ‘anechoic chamber’, Microsoft finally finished the construction of the room in 2015. It is located in the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US. The room is completely soundproof, preventing any kind of external noise from reaching the occupants. It also stops any internal noise from coming out.

"While this seems to be a peaceful experience, however, only a few people can stand spending hours inside the space. The room has also bagged a place in the Guinness World Record for being the “world’s quietest place” where the average background noise reading was measured at -20.35 decibels."

"The specially constructed chamber is hidden in the depths of Building 87 at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, where the firm’s hardware laboratories are based. Products like the Surface computers, Xbox and Hololens have all been developed here," the BBC says.

"Microsoft’s engineers built the room – known as an anechoic chamber – to help them test new equipment they were developing and in 2015 it set the official world record for silence when the background noise level inside was measured at an ear-straining -20.6 decibels.

"To put that in context, a human whisper is about 30 decibels while the sound of someone breathing normally comes in at just 10 decibels. It gets close to the limit of what should be possible to achieve without creating a vacuum – the noise produced by air molecules colliding with each other at room temperature is estimated to be about -24 decibels."

"Hidden deep within Building 88 on the Microsoft campus lies what's officially certified to be the quietest room in the world. Really — the company recently won the Guinness World Record for it," the Yahoo Finance says.

"Microsoft built this completely silent room, called an "anechoic chamber," to help it do all kinds of science — from building better speakers for its Surface tablets and laptops, to improving Skype call performance, without noise contamination from the outside world.

"But Microsoft didn't just want a quiet room...it wanted the quietest. Gopal tells me that the absolute quietest that anything on this planet can ever get is negative 23 decibels, since that's the sound level made by air molecules bouncing off each other."

Microsoft spent $1.5m building quietest place on Earth at its Redmond campus
Small room is housed within six concrete layers on vibration damping springs
Walls, floor, ceiling are covered in giant wedges of fiberglass foam to stop echo
It's so quiet that nobody has been able to spend more than 45 minutes inside

"The chamber is within six concrete layers, each up to 12 inches thick, that help to block out sounds from the outside world. The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in giant wedges of fiberglass foam to eradicate any echoes," the Daily Mail says.

"The chamber floats on 68 vibration damping springs and is mounted on its own separate foundation slab to cut it off from the rest of the building."

"An anechoic chamber (an-echoic meaning "non-reflective" or "without echoes") is a room designed to stop reflections or echoes of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also often isolated from energy entering from their surroundings. This combination means that a person or detector exclusively hears direct sounds (no reflected sounds), in effect simulating being outside in a free field.

"Anechoic chambers, a term coined by American acoustics expert Leo Beranek, were initially exclusively used to refer to acoustic anechoic chambers. Recently, the term has been extended to other radio frequency (RF) and sonar anechoic chambers, which eliminate reflection and external noise caused by electromagnetic waves.

"Anechoic chambers range from small compartments the size of household microwave ovens to ones as large as aircraft hangars. The size of the chamber depends on the size of the objects and frequency ranges being tested." (Wikipedia)

Photos: World's Quietest Room, world record in Redmond, Washington

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