The Quietest Room In The World

If you've never been in an anechoic chamber, it's literally an unreal experience. Things are quiet; too quiet. So quiet that it's disconcerting, since even in the quietest place you can think of, you can still at least hear reflections from your own movement.

I've always assumed that the quietest anechoic room belonged to either JBL (I was told that they have 3 of them) or the Institute for Research and Coordination In Audio and Music (IRCAM) in France, but according to the Guinness World Records, it's actually at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis. Supposedly the Orfield chamber absorbes 99.9% of all sound generated within, which results in a measurement of -9dB SPL. As a comparison, a typical quiet room at night where most people sleep is at 30dB SPL, while a typical conversation is at about 60dB SPL.

The Orfield chamber is so quiet that no one has been able to stay inside for more than 45 minutes due to the fact that you begin to hear your heart beating, you lungs working, and even the blood coursing through your veins. Some people even begin to hallucinate during the experience. In fact, you can't even stand after a half-hour since you no longer hear the audio cues that you're used to when you stand as the reflections bounce off the floor, ceiling and walls of the environment.

While it's easy to figure out what JBL does with their anechoic chamber, what goes on in an independent one like at Orfield? It seems that the chamber is used by companies like Harley Davidson and Maytag to test how loud their products are. NASA also uses it for astronaut training.

Here's a short video that describes the Orfield anechoic chamber.

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New York AES 2011 Report

Here's an overview of the day that I spent at the 2011 AES Show in New York City. First of all, thanks to everyone who came by the Hal Leonard booth for my book signing. It was great to personally meet so many of you that have I've only previously known through Facebook.

Other than that, the AES show was fairly depressing. It was the smallest show I've been to in some time as many audio companies, especially those that sell software, didn't even bother to exhibit. Who can blame them? NYC is one of the most expensive places on the planet at the moment, and AES charges a fortune for their booths. What's worse, they really don't reach much of an audience these days since the attendance at the show consists of mostly grey beards. I think the average age must be something like 45 or older. It's depressing. Even I was feeling old. If AES doesn't address this issue soon and do something to attract the younger generations of the business, it's going to die and fairly quickly.

As far as the show itself, there wasn't much to tell. Most of the manufacturers consisted of boutique creators of mics and mic preamps, it seemed, many times 2 or 3 to a booth. JBL and Yamaha didn't have booths at all, but did bring in their trucks that featured a few exhibits inside.

Of course the big news was Avid's introduction of Pro Tools X, which seemed to be pretty good if you're a power user. In a nut shell, if you regularly do sessions at 192kHz or use 256 tracks, you'll have to run out and get this right away. If not, continue upgrading to PT 9 like the rest of us (I just updated last month, but I'm not the only one as this was a comment that I heard on the floor over and over).

Ocean Way decided that making monitors and drum libraries wasn't challenging enough and jumped into the microphone biz as well with a model based on a U47FET. I'm sure it sounds great since Alan Sides knows his mics and wouldn't have it any other way. The price is right at about a thousand bucks.

Focusrite entered the controller biz in earnest with this nifty workstation that's the big brother to their 2802.

This interesting device by VisiSonics is actually a surround mic and camera. It has 64 mics and 5 cameras, which is cool in itself, but the best part of the software, which allows you to isolate any conversation in a crowd with a touch of the touchscreen. I'm sure the FBI or CIA will be all over this.

The Kamesan KS-117 Lip Checker does just that. It checks and measures the sync between audio and video so you know just the right amount of offset to apply. It was in the Tascam booth, so I guess they distribute them.

Also from Tascam, the iXZ is an outboard preamp for the iPhone recording. There are a few of these already on the market, but this one is only 50 bucks. Great for interviews, I bet.

I loved the sound of the these JBL computer monitors. The LSR2325P's sounded huge and have bit bang for the buck at only $199 each. Of course, I use LSR4328's everyday myself, so I'm already a big JBL fan.

Finally, this is what I felt like by the end of the show.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.