Absolute silence

Today my dad was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Winchester School of Art, now part of the University of Southampton. The illustrious professor looking after us for the day was an engineer, specifically working with signal processing - coincidentally an area of fascination for my dad. So we got to see some amazing things - the reverberation room (an 11 second echo after any sound), 3D music and this, the anechoic chamber. Walk in here, and they close a huge metal soundproofed door, and you hear the painful sound of total silence. All sounds are dead. Clap - it's dead. Shout - it's dead. There is no bounce of sound off anything. It's very, very weird indeed.

ISVR is the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research - world renowned and unique. My dad was like a boy with a box of mad toys.