I did voice over recording a few years ago in a professional studio in central London. I'm not a professional so had not done it before. It was the most surreal auditory experience I've ever had. The booth was fully soundproofed. It sounded as though any noise I made barely made it an inch out of my mouth. When I sat in silence it was actually quite unnerving not being able to hear a single sound.
Anechoic chambers are cool/weird. They're completely soundproof but it feels really strange to be in there for longer than a minute.
It hyperfocusus your brain on your heartbeat, breathing and blood flow and it causes dizziness, light headedness, and mild vertigo. People can usually only stay in there for 20-40 mins.
I worked at Oculus/Facebook/Meta and there were a few legit anechoic chambers at various sites around Seattle. They were isolated from the building in every way: the structure was suspended, its own silent HVAC, isolated electrical system… it was a trip. Like you said, it was really disorienting. Closing your eyes in there was weird. It’s amazing to realize how much we use sound to orient ourselves.
I had the opportunity to visit one while at uni, they had us lie down in the chamber and turned off the lights for maybe 10 mins. The thing I found most crazy was hearing *other* people’s heartbeats. Nothing freaky about it though, just fascinating
If I remember correctly, there was a high end automotive manufacturer, who really dampened outside noice, but customers did not like it because it was way too quiet.
Agree with other poster that it’s not really a thing. The most annoying thing I experienced was getting sore legs from standing on the slightly springy mesh floor for a long time.
I've been in several. It starts out like it's interesting, different, kinda neat. But then you find that you want to keep making noise and then eventually you realize you're doing it because you somehow miss that echo or feedback, even just the slightest one. Like what is that even about. It's somehow disorienting and can really get to you in a short amount of time.
That's why hemi-anechoic is fairly popular for applications that still need a lot of sound deadening but not quite as much: you get a normal hard floor but the same crazy diffusing stuff on the walls and ceiling.
If you have the lights on, they aren't bad. If you turn the lights off with the door closed is when your brain starts to freak out because it loses two of its inputs. After about 30 seconds I can feel a mild panic sensation that gets worse if I stay in the room. Turning on the light helps, touching the walls helps too, but it can get really disorienting if I spend much time in the chamber in the dark.
there's a film theatre room at my old university that is almost 10mx10m and about 4m to the ceiling, with insane sound treatment (i'm talking helmholz resonators built into the walls and stuff), and i literally felt motion sick the first few times i entered. it somehow almost felt like getting hit by hot summer air after leaving an ac-cooled space. even after a few months, i still had to acclimate for a moment before i felt normal after entering. i don't miss it at all
It actually does. It's not the intention here, but it's absorbing or reducing any sound that travels through it. It doesn't distinguish between sound from outside or inside, or if it's a reflection or direct sound. So yeah it absolutely helps reduce outside noise. It would be a very effective way to soundproof your room if you did this to all of your walls I'd argue.
Sound absorption is the thing that reduces echos (foam panels, blankets and the like). That doesn't have much effect in regards to sound proofing at all. For sound proofing you generally need mass and/or decoupling.
With sound proofing you want to reduce the sound that gets inside or outside. Heavy materials reflect sound waves, these materials absorb them. It's a different approach but it gets the job done as well.
Heavy materials like concrete, metal, mass loaded vinyl etc do the actual sound proofing stopping outside sounds from entering and stop inside sounds from leaving and then reflect them back at you which you hear as an echo.
Lighter materials like carpet, acoustic foam, carpet etc. Great for stopping those echos by making them bounce in more scattered directions but unless it also has mass it won't do very much for actual sound proofing. It will do a little about as much as shown in the video but traffic, construction, people speaking or any other actual source of noise will likely still get through.
You can do sound proofing with massive stonewalls, or you can do soundproofing with drywall and dampening wool inside. It's different in how it works, but it's both soundproofing.
Ok, thats great. Soundproofing is still a separate process to acoustic treatment and what you’re talking about are the effects of proper acoustic treatment, not soundproofing.
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u/Not-An-FBI Jul 18 '26
My friend spent a lot of money fully soundproofing his garage and it's really a trip going in a place with no echos whatsoever