Anti-Vuvuzela measures!

One question, which is the most talked about topic on twitter today? You’ll hear the word ‘vuvuzela’ echoing all over. The symbol of South Africa, the vuvuzela is clearly not being taken too well by football fans across the world. In fact it’s becoming a menace and fans are agitated that they can’t peacefully enjoy the world’s greatest international sports event from the comfort of their homes. Blogs, online forums, twitter and Facebook are flooded with loud outcries demanding the ban on the instrument.

But what is the vuvuzela? It’s just a blow horn that spectators use for cheering. Even in other countries, like the US, a bunch of spectators use blow horns made with pressurized cans for cheering, and I doubt they go overboard with it. But yes, this is nuts, the loud buzzing sound of thousands of vuvuzelas playing at once is likely to drive any human insane, let alone concentrating on the game.

Yesterday, a guy on the radio talked about how fans watching the match on TV can drown the sound of the buzzing by making a slight change in the audio equalizer of a TV. He suggested that if you turn the 300Hz audio channel down and raise the other channels, the buzzing can considerably decrease, but at the cost of making the commentary slightly inaudible too. Is that a solution? I guess not, but it’s worth the shot.

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This one’s funny, one of the bloggers suggested that spread the word across the blogosphere and ask people who have friends amongst spectators to tweet a message, asking them to grab the vuvuzela next to them and toss it on the field. Imagine hundreds of vuvuzelas being tossed around, that could be really funny, or dangerous actually. On a serious note, my point is, people are agitated. When spectators and players can’t hear the commentary, announcements and cannot concentrate on the game, how do you expect that people watching them on TV will?

Here’s another way to drown the vuvuzela sound which seems quite promising, technically. There’s this MP3 file (it’s called the vuvuzela filter) recorded at a particular frequency and brings about something called phase cancellation. When this sound is played close to your TV speaker, it cancels the irritating sound, making it faint enough for human ears.

All technical details and the MP3 file is available at www.antivuvuzelafilter.com . It costs around 2.95 Euros and you can pay online by major credit cards or even by paypal. Supposedly, the file is also available on torrent sites, but do we have the time to get into the authenticity part of things now?

Note to the spectators: you can’t use this file and you’re not watching TV, so I’d say grab a vuvuzela and make the most of the experience, who knows, if the ban goes through, you might not get another chance.