Inside the quietest room in the world

If you crave peace and quiet, it could be the ultimate destination.

Deep within Microsoft’ s Redmond campus is the quietest place on the planet.

The record-breaking room is used by the tech giant to do everything from tuning its headphones to making your mouse clicks sound perfect.

However, the firm has found is it too quiet for most people - and nobody has been able to spend more than 45 minutes inside.

The few outsiders who have entered it have complained of everything from becoming disturbed by the loudness of their own breathing to ringing in the ears and deafening stomach gurgles.

‘ Some people come in for a minute and want out immediately ,’ said Hundraj Gopal, Microsoft’s principal human factors engineer, and the man who led the team that built the anechoic chamber.

‘People can’t handle it, it rattles their brains, it’s sensory deprivation.’

Gopal said the record for staying in the room, recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest on Earth, is short.

‘ This is the quietest place on the planet, and the most someone has been able to stay in is 45 minutes.’

Known as an anechoic chamber, it is a small room measur- ing 21ft (6.36m) in each direction.

It is designed to be as perfectly quiet as possible, to allow engineers to tune audio devices and sound in perfect conditions.

The chamber is within six concrete layers, each up to 12 inches thick, that help to block out sounds from the outside world.

‘This chamber blocks 120db, so if you had a jet engine taking off just outside, you would barely hear it,’ said Gopal.