Wired: Should World Cup Broadcasters Mute Vuvuzela Horns?
Although it can’t fix the World Cup’s officiating mistakes, a company called Audioanamix has devised a solution to another gripe dogging the tournament by silencing the buzzing drone of the vuvuzela horns commonly played by fans at African soccer matches. Audionamix is providing the drone relief to French pay television broadcaster Current+, and says it will do the same for any other broadcaster who wants it over the next month or so of World Cup matches.
Like many innovations, Audionamix Vuvuzela Remover was invented to solve a problem for its inventor. Olivier Attia, the CEO of the Paris-based Audionamix, said his crew didn’t like the way the vuvuzela overwhelmed other crowd noise — the oohs, aahs and coordinated songs that usually permeate soccer matches.
Lucky for them, the company makes software for separating source audio into distinct elements to help integrate music into film scores (somewhat similarly to the Melodyne Direct Note Access ).
“We were watching the WorldCup with the rest of the world, and found our enjoyment of the experience hindered by the loud drone created by the blowing of thousands of the vuvuzelas,” said Attia in a statement. “Our Audionamix engineers immediately went into to the lab and emerged 48 hours later with a solution that removes the higher frequencies created by the festive instrument.”
As the demonstration to the right shows, Vuvuzela Remover can strip just about every auditory trace of the controversial plastic horns, which produce a low B-flat tone at about 230 KHz with minor variations that occasionally make one stand out from the others. We have verified in the past that computers are capable of teasing out elements from within an audio recording based on pitch and other sonic elements. This technology is real.
For those who wish to remove the sound on their own, one do-it-yourself solution involves running software on a normal computer that removes the vuvuzela’s frequencies using EQ. Another technique involves removing the offending frequencies using the EQ in a stereo system. But Audionamix claims its broadcaster-ready software works better than EQ, and backs up that claim with the above demonstration. ...
I really hat vuvuzelas. I vote for using the sound improving technology.
