For years George had been obsessed with the stories of two sound chambers on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington. Known as ‘acoustic test chambers’ around the campus, the two rooms (at least in George’s case) have been shrouded in mystery, rumor and intrigue. Recently included as part of the IU Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, what are actually called the anechoic and echoic test chambers are now being used for sound localization research.

On this week’s show, find out the history and debunk the rumors of these chambers, while experiencing two of the most unnatural sounding rooms on earth.

Note: When the episode was originally published, we incorrectly stated that the chambers were built in the 1970’s. The chambers were built in the 1950’s and the episode has since been corrected. We regret the error.

See the chambers for yourself with the gallery below:

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Dominic WIlcox is an established artist in London, England. His work ranges from sculpture, clothing design, drawings and more recently a vinyl record. The ‘Sounds of Making in East London’ is a commissioned work by Dominic after he was asked to create a ‘souvenir of East London.’ Instead of taking a traditional route, he went around to the ‘makers’ of the East end and recorded them on the job. The resulting work is a tribute to the overlooked and forgotten jobs of England.

This episode uses these sound effects from freesound.org:
‘air-raid’ by blaukreuz, ‘Marines in Firefight Gunbattle (Raw audio)’ by qubodup, ‘BellChurch’ by mich3d, ‘morning_birds’ by morgantj, ‘20120715_ourense.bell.01’ by dobroide, ‘thsha1_binaural_church_bell_20060528_1’ by thsha1, ‘01112 church bells 3’ by Robinhood76, ‘Sirmione – Kirchenläuten’ by aarom

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Photo by Dominic Wilcox