by Andrew Slotnick
Managing Editor
The world’s most widely broadcast sporting event is well underway in South Africa, celebrating the sport known as soccer in the USA—where “football” of course describes a sport that consists of using one’s hands to catch and carry an egg-shaped pigskin. While the visual excitement on the field is as stunning as ever, the roar of the crowd and the commentators must compete with a brand new menace: “BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.”
Anyone who has watched a World Cup game knows well the sound of a noisemaker so annoying I hesitate to call it an instrument, the vuvuzela. These ubiquitous plastic horns are crude bugles with a length around 3 feet and are capable of producing a sound pressure level of 127 dB, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse. Vuvuzelas pose a risk to spectators’ hearing as part of the general din at a World Cup match. The South African Medical Journal found that spectators near a vuvuzela in a simulated match environment experienced sound exposure well above South Africa’s legal limit for sound at the workplace.
As match attendees lose their hearing, viewers from around the world are losing patience about the change in atmosphere brought on by the unending buzzing sound. Complaints abound all over the internet, with the LA Times, Associated Press, and The New York Times Freakonomics Blog all voicing negative opinions. World Cup organizer FIFA has repeatedly insisted the horns will not be banned, which seems only fair since they are an important part of the host country’s soccer culture. So what are the millions of slightly inconvenienced fans to do?
Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics suggests that ESPN buy the horns from fans at the stadium to get rid of the noise, a prospect the enthusiastic South Africans would not relish. But a much simpler alternative exists. As Berklee students, we should know that an unpleasant sound at a fixed pitch is no problem at all for a bit of audio technology. Enterprising German fan Tobias Herre took matters into his own hands using a copy of Logic Pro and posted the results online. After discovering the frequencies of the horns and applying a little bit of parametric EQ, he was able to nearly eliminate the annoying tone of thousands of plastic horns. Applying such a filter to the stadium audio feed could easily remove most of the annoyance for audiences worldwide.
It looks as though ESPN is taking some steps to reduce the sound; an article on their website asserts “ESPN is altering the sound mix on its broadcasts to minimize the crowd noise.” Hopefully that means just reducing the buzzing tone, not the roaring crowd. The sound during the June 14 Paraguay-Italy game does seem pretty good, with the vuvuzelas present but not overpowering. For now, any fans wanting to hear live sound from the games must either put up with the vuvuzela, run their own outboard gear, or reach for the mute button.
The photo for this piece was taken by Dundas Football Club, used here under a Creative Commons license.
