Sounds good to me...
And while we’re on chambers, here’s my favourite of the bunch, the anechoic chamber, where sound is the enemy.Here’s an interesting point which was raised by the QNAP guys. In terms of decibels, an anechoic chamber does not exist that can blank out all sound.. it’s just too damned hard to do. So at the very best, you’ll be picking up around 15-20dB even with nothing in the chamber. Even given that 0dB is the threshold of hearing, perceived absolute silence is incredibly quiet… you just don’t ever hear it.
Standing inside an anechoic chamber feels very odd as a near complete lack of noise in your ears is something we never experience, there’s always a bit of background hum or white noise… It can almost make you feel dizzy as your ears fight to hear even the slightest sound. I wouldn’t want to spend more than a few minutes in one, that’s for sure.
Click for larger imageBut here’s the rub; perceiving sounds lower than around 15dB is beyond most people so even though it appears to be totally silent, an anechoic chamber is still measuring sound. So when a product is claimed to have an incredibly low sound rating of around 14dB or lower, you’ve got to ask yourself how they know that when their chamber is very probably not capable of isolating enough sound to give that as a pure measurement… makes you think, hmm?
Click for larger imageMoving on from the sound labs and thankfully back into an area with a bit of background noise, we were then shown a whole suite of testing rooms, all designed to check just one area of a products properties. The pic below shows a testing suite for current draw and earthing, kind of important if you don’t want to melt the PSU or fry the user… (yes, I know it’s more complex than that but that’s the gist of it).
Click for larger imageThe next room is devoted to static build up and how that earths itself. I would’ve gone in further and taken some better shots but I was painfully aware of the nylon socks I was wearing… the last thing I wanted to do was fry some sensitive electrical equipment with a statis spark they weren’t ready for.
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