Rating: Mobile solution to that horrible World Cup noise
As any World Cup soccer (footie) widow can tell you, the worst thing about watching the games which are currently being played in South Africa is the constant drone of the horns in the background. Those horns are known as Vuvuzelas. Now there is the Anti-vuvuzelafilter MP3 file which you can play on any smartphone, iPod or other MP3 player equipped device.
The company which sells this MP3 file appears to be just called Antivuvuzelafilter.com. It says, “Our specially designed Vuvuzela noise-cancellation sound is a wave with the same amplitude but with inverted phase to the original sound.
The waves combine to form a new wave, in a process called interference, and effectively cancel each other out -an effect which is called phase cancellation.”
Mobile phones themselves, and Bluetooth earpieces in particular, are riddled with noise-cancellation technology so GoMo News felt morally obliged to try this new technology out.
For the best results, you are supposed to play the MP3 file on the same speaker system that your TV uses. Which is kind of self-defeating given that the easier way to get rid of the noise is to turn either the sound or the TV off.
Vuvuzela noise pollution is really at its worst is in the pub where the TV is always on in the background. So GoMo News trotted down to a suitable drinking establishment to test if the Anti-Vuvuzela filter MP3 really works.
The results were inconclusive. For example, playing the MP3 file back through earpieces whilst the game is being shown on TV definitely did not work. Neither did placing the handset playing the MP3 right next to the speakers seem to do any good.
However, placing the handset next to you on the bar very definitely seemed to drown out the noise of the Vuvuzela horns. It might have been a placebo effect but it seemed to make the £2.53 for the download in the UK worthwhile.
Included in that price you get a free ‘Tube Station TV’ application which enables you to watch digital TV and listen to digital radio on your PC.
For those who want to know who to blame for the earache that is the Vuvuzela chorus, there’s a very good backgrounder on the Antivuvuzelafilter.com site here.
Apparently the alternative name for the Vuvuzela is the lepatata, and the guy who claims to have invented is called Freddie ‘Saddam’ Maake.
The original was made from aluminium but Maake found a firm able to make them out of plastic. The rest is history, as they say.
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Ok, as a point of contention, we have “vuvuzelas” at CFL (Canadian Football League) games here in Canada since the early 70′s. They have always been made of plastic and are exactly the same. Thousands of fans have had them at games but would only blow them periodically throughout the game, never the constant drone that we hear during this world cup.
The reason you hear the vuvuzelas constantly at the World Cup matches is because they are prerecorded and played via the PA system, this is true for the Cape Town Stadium. Why I know that this is true is because on a non match day when the stadium is empty and you hear the vuvuzelas being blown hour after hour makes you wonder exactly who is blowing them. Its a pity that they feel the need to stoop so low as to do a thing like this, makes one wonder if they were worried that there would not be enough people blowing the vuvuzelas during the matches.