They say that this space can make you, like people go crazy, that's not really true, but

I think I could see why some people would not want to be in here for a long time.

I'm Dylan Therese and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

Today, we're going to a sleepy residential street in Minneapolis to experience the Orfield

Anticoic Chamber, a room inside another room inside a concrete bunker inside a laboratory,

a room once known as the quietest room on Earth.

So, I'm here at Orfield Labs, it is in what neighborhood are we in?

I was visiting Minneapolis for a month and I knew well I was there, I wanted to come visit

the Orfield Labs, which is in fact in the sewer neighborhood.

It's this unassuming IV-covered building and I've actually been to once before to experience

the world's quietest room.

Actually since I've been there, it's actually been surpassed by another Anticoic Chamber,

but for a whole set of complicated reasons I'm not going to go into, it's probably still

the quietest room on the planet, or at least it's definitely one of them.

Anyway, I wanted to visit it again, but I was also interested in the history of the space.

Because for a building known for having one of the quietest rooms on Earth, the place

we're visiting today actually has an incredible acoustic history.

In the late 1960s and 70s, it housed a recording studio called Sound 80, where artists like

Bob Dylan, Kat Stevens and Prince recorded some of their most iconic work.

Besides that, it was also home to one of the first digital recording studios in the world.

They were recording Kat Stevens last American album and I said in on the recordings.

...