The quietest place on Earth is so silent that visitors can hear their own bodies in ways they never imagined, right down to the sound of their eyelids closing.

The anechoic test chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, holds the record for the world’s quietest room, with a staggering ambient sound level of -24.9 decibels A-weighted (dBA).

This room, designed to suppress 99.99% of all sound, is unlike any other. Visitors have reported hearing their own heartbeats, blood flowing through their veins, and even their stomachs gurgling with eerie clarity.

The overwhelming quiet can lead to discomfort, disorientation, and nausea, and most people struggle to stay in the room for extended periods.

Some even report feeling a loss of balance, as humans rely on ambient sound for spatial awareness.First claiming the world record for quietness in 2004 with a background noise reading of -9.4 dBA, Orfield Labs continued to improve the chamber’s design.

In 2012, sound levels were reduced even further to -13 dBA. However, in 2015, the lab lost its title to Microsoft’s anechoic chamber in Washington, which measured at -20.35 dBA.

Orfield Labs reclaimed the title in 2021 with the current record-setting -24.9 dBA reading.

The room’s extreme silence is achieved through an elaborate design featuring 3.3-foot-thick fibreglass acoustic wedges, double insulated steel walls, and a layer of concrete over a foot thick. 

The chamber is not just a curiosity, but also serves a practical purpose—testing and refining product sounds.

Companies like Harley-Davidson and Whirlpool use the chamber to fine-tune the auditory signatures of their products.

Orfield Labs’ founder, Steven Orfield, said: “When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”

Orfield himself once spent 30 minutes inside the chamber and could hear the mechanical valve in his heart loudly ticking, a surreal and unsettling experience for even the most seasoned audiophiles.