Help me find and visit an anechoic chamber in SoCal!

December 23, 2014 1:05 PM

Anechoic chamber filter: Are there any in Los Angeles/Orange County area? I'm really interested in trying to visit one to see what it's like, but the only ones I've been able to find are for electronic testing and are radio-anechoic, not human-hearing-range anechoic.
posted by BuddhaInABucket to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

Might try recording studios? The quietest space I've ever been in was a portable recording room setup at a place I worked, it was basically a 4'x4' by 8' high box on wheels, lined with that eggshell foam. Eerily quiet.
posted by straw at 1:19 PM on December 23, 2014

Another possibility would be a space designed for serious hearing tests; I can hear even less worth a damn in those rooms when someone is speaking to me.
posted by tchemgrrl at 1:35 PM on December 23, 2014

Try the universities. I found reference to one at UCLA with this search:

site:.edu anechoic "los angeles"

There's a bunch of references to it if one narrows the search to ucla, so if you have the time to track down which department operates it (it looks like it might be physics):

site:ucla.edu anechoic
posted by Candleman at 4:09 PM on December 23, 2014

Uc Riverside has one ( http://faculty.sites.uci.edu/anechoic/anechoic-chamber-schedule-2/). I used to do experiments as a subject for a faculty member there. It's not really set up for tours though, its for research. You could mimic the set up by putting like 40 layers of eggshell foam in a room.
posted by holyrood at 5:20 PM on December 23, 2014

Check out your local science museum. The one near me has one, though it's more of an anechoic hallway, but is pretty cool to go through nonetheless.
posted by noneuclidean at 5:33 PM on December 23, 2014

If you can't find an acoustic one, the RF ones are pretty bloody quiet.
posted by markr at 9:52 PM on December 25, 2014