Digitally Filtering Out the Drone of the World Cup 602
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."
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:a day late... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Filtering is Uncalled For (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheers and yelling add to the excitement. These plastic toys just add to the irritation. I had to listen to a segment this morning just talking about it, and was forced to mute the volume it was so grating. Easier to just ban the damn things and then they can go 'unfiltered'.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, if the BBC and others are going to start filtering them, we get the best of both worlds. Nothing has to be banned, no ugly racial tensions are stirred, and we can watch the World Cup without being driven halfway to insanity. Count me pleased.
Filtering is called for (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it is something foreign, and probably also because it is African, they're all upset.
Bull shit.
People are upset because the noise is extremely distracting, conveys nothing about the fans' excitement with the game, and according to a South African audiologist who was on the news yesterday, the sound is well past the threshold for causing hearing damage.
It would be one thing if the sound changed to reflect the excitement of the crowd during the game, but it doesn't. It's just a constant loud wall of sound at basically the same level from the start of the game to the end.
It's similar in level and monotony to running jet engines at full throttle on test stands in the stadium, throughout the entire game. It doesn't add, it detracts.
What you are saying is that traditions have to be respected, no matter how stupid or disruptive they are.
I propose an alternative. All other countries should create a tradition of randomly setting explosive charges off in their stadiums whenever the South African team is there.
It's our tradition, and you have to respect it.
Re:Filtering is Uncalled For (Score:4, Insightful)
No, so you can watch the entire game without a beehive buzzing in your ear. Come to think of it, this will probably resolve on it's own via the advertisers. When they figure out everyone is muting the game, and no one can hear their ads as a result, you can bet pressure will be applied on the stadiums to ban them. Although there may be thousands who go to the game to watch, there are millions made on commercials from the millions of viewers who catch the game on TV.
Re:Wow, bad editing (Score:1, Insightful)
"I'm looking at its wave patterns and there are at least six very strong harmonics in there. It would sound really horrible to notch these out - if one coincides with the vowel sound e, you won't be able to hear the -es in the commentary. It would sound unnatural."
"They can also change the balance between crowd noise and the commentary box, as these have separate mics."
Couldn't you then just apply the notch filters to the crowd mics ?
Re:Wow, bad editing (Score:1, Insightful)
That's a surprisingly bullshit-packed article for the BBC. There's a key paragraph in the middle that the rest of the article blithely ignores, pretending they can only filter on the combined audio:
It's rather unlikely that the commentator's mics are picking up much vuvuzela sound. If they are, switch 'em out with directional mics and maybe even do the traditional technique of noise cancelling by using a second mic. This is easy and cheap to do. It's the crowd mics that are picking up all the crap, and it really doesn't matter too much if you slice out a few frequency ranges there.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
if the BBC and others are going to start filtering them, we get the best of both worlds
Except we don't. The players are unable to communicate on the pitch in any way, leading to the worst standard of play. As players cannot be warned when somebody is behind them, they just play safe and hoof the ball up the pitch just in case. The world's top players are being made to look like talentless hacks in dull low-scoring games. This may well go on to be the worst World Cup, and after this the Champions League finals may go on to eclipse the World Cup finals.
Phillip.
Re:I dont need it. (Score:5, Insightful)
DING DING DING! Sir, I'd like to let you know that you have won the Slashdot "Sperglord Post of the Year" award.
Let's break this one down for all the viewers out there, John:
"I have a better idea" - I am superior to everyone posting in this thread, particularly the parent.
"Change the channel to something that isn't a sport at all" - I don't like games that are based on physical activity and skill. Sports are for dumb jocks who have no higher brain functions whatsoever. Now excuse my while I grab my 2-liter of Mountain Dew and Doritos and go raid Sunwell (or insert other WoW raid here, I'm not up on the current MMO trends)
"Spectator sports are a complete waste of time." - I don't like sports, and therefore they are a waste of time. Never mind that my previous suggestion was to CHANGE THE CHANNEL TO SOMETHING ELSE, and that any television watching could easily be construed as a waste of time. You see, the fansubbed Anime imports I watch are not a waste of time, they are high art that is clearly superior to watching near physically superhuman athletes compete at the top of their game against some of the most skilled opponents they will ever face.
So you see, sports are pointless and the only people who enjoy them are meatheads. Thank you, Grisnakh, for helping to perpetuate the stereotype that all Slashdot posters are scrawny, basement dwelling nerds that can't participate in activities that most well-adjusted human beings can enjoy.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I dont need it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your life must be so horrible if you waste no time, at all, ever.
Re:South African Here (Score:5, Insightful)
As a South African, I wholeheartedly support anything that annoys the opposition.
Just don't expect "the opposition" to bring their shows to your country anytime soon. No FIFA, no Olympics, no big international events of any type. They're all gonna watch at these broadcasts, listen to the worldwide complaints, and mark "don't broadcast events from here" with an arrow pointing to South Africa on their maps of the world.
Re:I dont need it. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's on here isn't he?
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a tradition it's a fad. These stupid things only began to be made and sold in south africa around 2001. That's not tradition. That's a fad. They never stop. It's not just during the game.. they NEVER stop. It's dangerous to be around them without hearing protection. They've been measured at 127dB. That's louder than a rock concert.
And would I want to see a ban on fan traditions in my country? Um.. yeah. Yeah, that would be a good idea. FIFA really SHOULD start cracking down on fans acting like self-indulgent assholes and feeling entitled to act that way because, holy shit it's FOOTBALL and obnoxious hooliganism is part of the TRADITION dontchaknow.
At what point should they step in? How about when fan behaviour actually starts HARMING OTHER FANS.. which these horns do.
frankly I'd be overjoyed if this world cup turns out to have received abysmally poor viewership due to these things. Maybe then they'll act.
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
just change the channel to a real sport
Sport?! This isn't mere sport, it's the World Cup man!
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that
-- Bill Shankly
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably mostly about vestiges of tribalism, finding some completelly arbitrary "us vs. them"
Which might be not such a bad idea if it's the only practical way of releasing steam... (hey, at my place "sport fans" groups fight mostly with each other for some time now, even in basically predetrmined time and location, a bit out of sight)
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
My plan is to learn American football by getting Madden late this summer so I can appreciate more of the complexity of the game and get drawn in. Maybe that will work.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?"
Like a ban on thundersticks? Yes, yes I would. Those things are horrible.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, when the World Cup was in Germany in 2006, you didn't see anyone try to hinder the traditions of violent neo-nazi hooliganism at soccer events. No way. We wouldn't want to ban things that fans like to do, even if they harm others and detract from the game.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not go pretending that this is some little guy sticking it to The Man kind of thing.
I know that quaint ethnic traditions are pure and good and "homogenization" is evil, but when you hold an international sporting event, there's the expectation that the players should be able to play the goddamn sport without interference from the fans. It's up there with "providing a stadium", you're just kind of expected to do that.
And yes, if the fan traditions of my country are disruptive to the game, I would very much like FIFA to ban them.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?"
Only the fucking stupid and purely assholish ones.
This qualifies.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
The american viewership will be abysmal because the coverage is not even at the standard of american football 40 years ago. What they need is more angles, more cameras, flying cameras, cameras on players, gyroscopic camera in the ball, cameras on the fans, cameras on the refs, cameras on hot babes, cameras cameras cameras... and someone that is good at producing to throw it all together live, so the thing flows and isn't confusing.
Sure, the way they shoot your football now it's like you're actually there... in the nose bleeds on one side if the field or the other. That shit is boring. I simply don't understand how there's all that money your football games, world cup... it's so much bigger than american football most Americans aren't aware... and they can't seem to understand that only Hollywood and it's decendants are any good at television, and in particular, sports coverage... I guess my point is, when you're that rich, you don't chince on the part that will make you richer... you buy the best, and instead, the foreign football games are produced by Mr. Magoo.
Btw, not sure why they haven't been notching these frequencies out... I mean, I can't believe the first engineer (or any of the engineers since) at the first broadcast of these obnoxious and meaningless noisemakers didn't just dial them in and drop them out... seems like it'd almost be a reflex to do that, so I call WTF on inexperienced foreign broadcasters.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:4, Insightful)
The comparison to hooligans isn't fair. There's no intent to hurt people or ruin the game for others, even if that's the outcome. Hooligans brutally assault innocent people without provocation, destroy property, throw body fluids, and threaten/humiliate players and officials. Even worse, it's not just out of control drunks, their actions are often organized and planned.
Re:There are only three sports (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think not having sports would lead to war? That's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of
Team sport as sublimated war --that's a new concept to you? Wow!
Now personally I have little interest in sport, but unlike you I don't begrudge others their entertainment. In any case international football is quite another matter from sport.
Speaking as a German (as I sometimes am) if you don't let us win either the European or World Cup every few decades we start the tanks rolling! ;) Seriously though, it is arguable that without the Wunder von Bern of 1954 we would not have witnessed the full blossoming of the Wirtschaftswunder of the late 50s and 60s, (only arguable though, because even by '54 the German economy was growing astoundingly). What is certain is that the euphoria that swept West Germany following Bern invigorated a thoroughly demoralised population and irreversibly affected the ideological complexion of the new country. A demoralised economically crippled Germany has not historically proven a good recipe for peace in Europe.
Fussball, moreover, affords one of the few socially acceptable avenues for expressing national pride. Safely contained within the stadium (hopefully), after the 90 minutes are up everyone goes home and once more become good Europeans. And it is by no means only in Germany that football is central to national idenity.
If you mistake what is happening in South Africa right now for sport, you simply don't grok it.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep, I saw Brazil play. They sucked. Maybe that had nothing to do with the horns, but why would you hold that game up as an example?
They should have pummeled North Korea. Instead it was a close game. If I knew nothing else about Brazil I'd say they didn't have a chance of getting past the group stage after watching that abomination.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans call a game "football" where physical foot contact with the ball, by both sides, throughout the entire game, adds up to maybe 2 seconds.
Between this and being the last major country to eschew the metric system, it's like you *want* the world to mock you ;-P
Re:Am I the only... (Score:4, Insightful)
So yeah I certainly saw the Brzil game, the question is did you???
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, that's the way I feel about it. I like playing games (including team sports on occasion), but I have zero desire to watch other people play them.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:1, Insightful)
The horns really annoy me too, and I agree with everything you said about safety and fan behavior. But there's no denying that bee-swarm hum is part of the South African football experience. It may be a recent phenomenon, but it's a point of pride for their fans and part of their identity. Right or wrong, native Africans see it as their stamp on post-apartheid Association Football.
The comparison to hooligans isn't fair. There's no intent to hurt people or ruin the game for others, even if that's the outcome. Hooligans brutally assault innocent people without provocation, destroy property, throw body fluids, and threaten/humiliate players and officials. Even worse, it's not just out of control drunks, their actions are often organized and planned.
Honest officer! I didn't INTEND to hurt her or cause permanent damage. It was just the outcome.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to worry about the camera angles, the 0-0 games are MORE than enough to keep me from watching.
Last night's (my time) Portugal vs Ivory Coast 0:0 game was one of the most exciting in this cup yet. Uruguay vs France 0:0 was tedious and as exciting as watching paint dry. The fact of being a scoreless draw is not determinative of the quality of the game.
Now I can understand not watching a football code you don't personally enjoy. I don't watch AFL, Rugby only very rarely and for me American football makes even golf look exciting. What I certainly wouldn't do is bother to read articles about games I don't like, let alone comment on them.
What's more, I figure, it's probably me, rather than those games themselves. After all millions of people get excited about the other codes. I guess that American football, for instance, requires an understanding of the strategy and tactics I simply don't possess. It might be a bit like a cross between chess and football for those who dig it. To me it's a series of erratic starts and stops, hardly any time is spent actually playing?! I get as much out of it as I would from a recital of Armenian poetry.
OTHO, anyone who fails to appreciate the beauty of a game like the scoreless draw between Portugal and the Ivory Coast is clearly a deranged philistine! ;)
Re:I dont need it. (Score:2, Insightful)
He said spectator sports sucked.
er you seem to be having trouble with reading comprehension. A spectator sport is a sport which attracts spectators e.g. Almost any mainstream sport. This is not the same as being a sports spectator. The GP was commenting on the type of sport (spectator sport) and not those watching it and saying that they suck. This seems like a blanket statement that deserved the ridicule it got!
Re:There are only three sports (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, i really can't see how multiple humans, armed, some mounted on horseback, against a single animal trapped in a big pen can be called "sport" by anyone. it's torture porn; nothing more than drawn-out slaughter.
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with your idea ...
It's hardly my idea.
Which is pretty much the argument used by people who want to ban violent video games, yes?
I don't entirely disagree with you, but I do think that you are being too simplistic here.
For a start sports don't have to be explicitly "warlike" to function as sublimated war (Freud's idea, I believe). Of course violent video games, or as you may prefer "violence training simulators," are inherently violent, it is (imagined) violence being reinforced.
Reinforcing shooting balls into a net, or more relevantly watching balls being shot into the net by "your" team, would not seem so obviously to encourage bellicosity. [In fact I doubt that violent video games engender violence in all or even most users. It is quite possible that what encourages behaviour in one individual is actually cathartic in others --but I'm simply disagreeing with you here.]
Secondly your statement that there is "only" and endorphin rush fails to appreciate the pharmacological complexities of the situation. At least as important here is the adrenaline (US: epinephrine) rush. Our sympathetic ("flight or fight") nervous system is but rarely stimulated as it was in our evolutionary past. Driving fast, skydiving and many sports, including I would argue watching team sport (where we have a strong emotional investment in the team), engage it and literally "let off steam" which would otherwise manifest as non-specific anxiety and stress.
Finally my point was not so much about individual physiology or even psychological catharsis, but about the historical and cultural inscriptions which national football bears, especially in post-WWII Europe. To appreciate this requires an examination of C18th nationalist reaction to the Vormärz, the subsequent migration of the ideology of nation from the left to the right of the political spectrum, and how what was originally a movement of liberation led directly to the gates of Auschwitz. It requires an understanding of the role inter alia of sport, and first and foremost football, in containing the European curse, which, especially in the areas placed in suspended animation by Soviet rule, can still show it's destructive face today.
In the face of Srebenica, shooting balls into a net seems rather more harmless to me.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There are only three sports (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I saw the bullfight.
It was torture, plain and simple.
I'm glad I saw it to witness the reality of it and next time I'm there, I'll join the protest.
Re:Am I the only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you use your television's equalizer you will filter too much sound which in effect kills the atmospehre.
Getting the right sound in while letting the annoying Vuvuzela out is some seriuous job in sound enigneering. But hey, everything one doesn't understand must be easy to do [dilbert.com], right?
Re:Get a vuvuzela! (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with South Africa. It has everything to do with annoying pricks now having a new toy to annoy the crap out of me with. I wish you a great World Cup, really. You're not at fault for so many soccer fans being adult-sized noisy brats. But don't expect me to not complain when you give the not-so-little pests new weapons of mass annoyance.
Re:I dont need it. (Score:4, Insightful)