Well, what’s your goal? 15 db? 10? 5? 0?
There is a point of “silence” at which the mind is not designed to adapt. The mind needs some noise simply so that it can keep us balanced while standing up. The mind needs some noise because it is programmed to listen. Absent all ambience, it will listen to the sound of our own body: heartbeat, breathing, even the sound of the blood pulsing through your ears. Absent that sound, it will create its own: that’s what tinnitus is.
A lab in Minnesota is so quiet that the longest anyone could stand being in it was about 45 minutes or so before they would want to run out screaming.
My room is around mid to high 20s db. I think that is practical, and good enough, because frankly, once the LP starts playing, the mind takes care of the problem: it “diminishes” the ambience and makes it recede to imperceptibility. I think that Millercarbon was alluding to this in his first comment: beyond a certain point, what’s the point?
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/orfield-labs-quiet-chamber
There is a point of “silence” at which the mind is not designed to adapt. The mind needs some noise simply so that it can keep us balanced while standing up. The mind needs some noise because it is programmed to listen. Absent all ambience, it will listen to the sound of our own body: heartbeat, breathing, even the sound of the blood pulsing through your ears. Absent that sound, it will create its own: that’s what tinnitus is.
A lab in Minnesota is so quiet that the longest anyone could stand being in it was about 45 minutes or so before they would want to run out screaming.
My room is around mid to high 20s db. I think that is practical, and good enough, because frankly, once the LP starts playing, the mind takes care of the problem: it “diminishes” the ambience and makes it recede to imperceptibility. I think that Millercarbon was alluding to this in his first comment: beyond a certain point, what’s the point?
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/orfield-labs-quiet-chamber