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Digitally Filtering Out the Drone of the World Cup

Posted by timothy on from the it's-called-an-off-switch-use-it dept.

qubezz writes "World Cup soccer fans may think a hornet's nest has infiltrated their TVs. However the buzz that is the background soundtrack of the South African-hosted games comes from tens of thousands of plastic horns called vuvuzelas, that are South Africa's version of ringing cowbells or throwing rats. It looks like the horns won't be banned anytime soon though. A savvy German hacker, 'Tube,' discovered that the horn sound can be effectively filtered out by applying a couple of digital notch filters to the audio at the frequencies the horn produces (another summary in English). Now it looks like even broadcasters like the the BBC and others are considering using such filters on their broadcasts."

17 of 602 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only... by aethogamous · · Score: 2, Interesting

    person who doesn't find the noise annoying? (Just curious.)

    1. Re:Am I the only... by carlzum · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I agree with you, but I didn't initially. After hearing that the first time, I wanted FIFA to put an end to it immediately. But the organization's president summed it up nicely when he said "Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?" The knee-jerk reaction would have been to eliminate or limit the horns. I admire FIFA's decision, they valued the host nation's fans over the international media.

      The sound bothers me, but I don't want the World Cup to become a homogenized TV event like the Olympics.

    2. Re:Am I the only... by Dahamma · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Definitely - this has been REALLY noticeable in most of the matches I have watched. There have been a bunch of instances already where defenders miscommunicated so badly they gave up some really strange scoring chances. It made them and the general play of the match sometimes look completely confused and amateurish, until you realized that they just couldn't hear anything their teammates or goalkeeper was yelling at them...

    3. Re:Am I the only... by QuantumRiff · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The first "Cheese head" was worn in a brewers game in 1987. By 1990, it was an incredibly common site. In just a few years, the term "cheeseheads" stopped being a derogatory term Chicagoans referred to Wisconsinites as, and became a term of pride for Wisconsinites. Seriously, it was a couple of years. If these horns have been going for 9 years, and they are that annoying and still used, then that is not a fad.

      A fad is something like the "who who who" people would chant at the start of the old Arsenio Hall show, that took off for one summer, then largely disappeared.

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    4. Re:Am I the only... by Another,+completely · · Score: 4, Interesting

      American football is short bursts of incredibly intricate plays in which every player is doing something worth analysis, and it provides long pauses during which that analysis can be shown from every angle possible in a three-dimensional world. The game we are talking about here is on a different time scale, in which players don't have so many set plays (since it doesn't start from the more-or-less known configuration of two separate groups facing each other), so every player needs to be inventive and adapt as the play progresses. There are also very few times when a producer can be sure nothing interesting is going to happen, so replays need to be kept to a minimum, and following the continually changing strategies might be more difficult with frequent camera-angle changes.

      Also, I suspect there is a single feed for the coverage (can someone confirm?) so a video producer needs to be extra confident before interrupting the feed to however many networks to show a replay that might overrun the play that makes the game. For most American football games, I think the coverage is bought by a single network, and the person selecting the camera angles and replays works for the same people as do the announcers, so they may have more freedom to try things out.

      I would also be interested in seeing what the coverage in the U.S. actually looks like (including the half-time and full-time replays), and comparing it with BBC/ITV broadcasts. Maybe we are not talking about the same thing.

  2. Opensource Cross platform Puredata Patch Vuvuzela by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Me and my friend made a Puredata patch (http://puredata.info) to filter the vuvuzela sound. You have the ability to choose the sound also, making it more dynamic.
    check it at http://joaomartins.entropiadesign.org/2010/06/15/vuvuzela-filter-a-puredata-approach/

  3. Too much work by Al+Al+Cool+J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When the World Cup started, I thought of playing around with notch filters to remove the noise, but the whole thing just reeked of effort. The human brain is actually pretty good at filtering out noise if you give it a chance. Just watch the games and don't worry about the vuvuzelas and before long you won't even notice them. I don't. It's a lot like what happens when you live next to a highway.

  4. The most annoying sound in the world. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Turn up your volume and go to Robot 9000. Warning: your sensibilities may be offended by the other content.

  5. Re:Opensource Cross platform Puredata Patch Vuvuze by rlameiro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    well, its a bit geeky, but it is cross platform and open source :D

  6. Re:Eh.. by v1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    after listening to the "before" and "after" application of the notch filter, I quickly noticed that when you removed the vuvu's, you ended up with a slightly quieter, equally annoying general sound of the crowd.

    The announcer really wasn't any easier to understand when the vuvus were removed. The audio's average level was just a little lower. (which did make it slightly easier on the ears)

    Not much of an improvement. I can't imagine them banning vuvus would have much of an impact on the game -- for example, the crowd noise itself would be almost equally effective at preventing the players from communicating. So unless you're going to surround the pitch with a Cone of Silence, you're just going to have to deal with noise, whether you're on the pitch or behind the big screen.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  7. There are only three sports by Burning1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." ~ Earnest Hemingway

    (Full disclosure: I race motorcycles.)

  8. Re:Marketing tip for next time by v1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    batch that are 180 degrees out of phase with the ones currently being used

    considering the number of them going off at once (hundred thousand or so?) and the fact that they're all fairly close to the same frequency already, statistically there's already another one going off that's 180 deg of phase of any one you look at.

    None of that matters though. For one, the location of the observer is important for phase cancellation. These flakes are everywhere in the crowd. Echoes also get around the effect.

    anyway, there are so many reasons that won't work I'm somewhat at a loss for where to start, but that's best effort off the cuff in simple terms.

    If you want to try a really freaky experiment though with cancellation, find two people that can whistle well, that have a fine degree of control over their whistle. Have one strike a very stable tone. Have the other try to match it. When they get to within less than a cycle of each other, it produces a very interesting moving zero-beat. At that point it becomes a challenge to hold, because BOTH whistlers will start periodically losing the ability to hear their own whistle, and that loss of self-feedback tends to make them drift. ("I'm blowing, but I don't HEAR anything") A third person observing will not hear two whistlers, but instead hears the source of the whistle appear to float back and forth between the two whistlers, sometimes very slowly, even to the point of outright stopping between the two, even if at a distance of several feet.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  9. Re:I dont need it. by Jawnn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a better idea: change the channel to something that isn't a sport at all. Watching stick and ball games is a complete waste of time.

    There. Fixed that for ya. Motorsports, anyone?

  10. Interesting by jvkjvk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder how long before half of what one sees and hears in supposedly "live" TV has been digitally massaged in some manner.

    You could take out ugly buildings to make a scene more aesthetically pleasing, notch out one particular persons voice, or remove an 'annoying' five seconds of tape.

    This subtle dichotomy between actual real life and tv "real life" could widen to the point of audiences being fed the "Leave it to Beaver" version of the real. We're generally already pissed off enough that our lives don't match the fake TV shows but this could bring a whole new level of cognitive dissonance, since these are supposedly "live" evens.

    The horns are there, in the stadium. They may be annoying but they are part of the event. I guess if it turns cloudy, perhaps they can photoshop in some blue sky...

    Regards.

  11. Re:vuvuzelas are a recent tradition by rminsk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Neil van Schalkwyk, who brought the vuvuzela to the mass market has partnered with Uthango Social Investments to sell ear plugs to fans for R25 a pair. http://www.sport24.co.za/Soccer/WorldCup/NationalNews/Vuvuzelas-unplugged-for-some-20100611

  12. Trivial for broadcasters by flyingfsck · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All broadcasters have extensive filters in their studios. It is trivially easy for a sound engineer to notch out the horns.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  13. Re:I dont need it. by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes and video games cause mass murder.
    Same argument and still wrong

    It's wrong if you use it to support a conclusion like "video games cause mass murder". What violent video games DON'T do is they DON'T make someone less violent. They don't necessarily make someone moreso, either. I have always maintained that if a video game pushes you over the edge, you were already broken.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"