Vuvuzela Removal

We’re hearing complaints everywhere about the noisemakers called Vuvuzelas during the world cup. Whether you are a fan of the sport or not, you can appreciate when a fellow hacker gets annoyed and start hacking. [Tube] has created a software filter that manages to remove the sound of the Vuvuzela from the videos. He shares the process of how it was all created, using Logic Express and a Mac mini (Google translation). Maybe this will also provide some relief from the constant stream of Vuvuzela whining as well.

[via DVice]

41 thoughts on “Vuvuzela Removal

  1. Can you please make one that filters out bass heads driving down the street or stopped at a light with their music excessively loud? ;-)

    just delete the audio and dub in the traffic sounds or re record your voice if you where talking. hard but eaiser than makin a program

  2. @davo1111

    The real issue is the vuvuzela encroaches on the same frequency as human speech. I don’t see any reason why they cant do this, since they already do this with their alternative commentary service.

    I imagine they want viewers to be able to hear football players on the pitch and running such a filter would cut out too much information.

    Personally I like the vuvuzelas, they have a soothing tone to them en masse.

  3. Oh I like that very much.

    The example audio provided sounds very good. Now they need to create some kind of firefox plugin so you can do it on any online video you watch.

    I haven’t honestly being watching the football. I don’t care for it myself but this sounds good anyway.

    Mowcius

  4. mplayer -af
    pan=1:0.5:0.5,sinesuppress=233:0.01,sinesuppress=466:0.01,sinesuppress=932:0.01,
    sinesuppress=1864:0.01,sinesuppress=232:0.01,sinesuppress=465:0.01,
    sinesuppress=931:0.01,sinesuppress=1863:0.01,sinesuppress=234:0.01,
    sinesuppress=467:0.01,sinesuppress=933:0.01,sinesuppress=1865:0.01

  5. This ain’t a hack! I wanna see a solar power cooler with a compressor in it driving thirty or more of the vuvuzella. That way I don’t have to use my own air.

  6. I’m a South African and I have to agree that the vuvuz drove me insane for a while. But you kinda get used to them and then they don’t bother you anymore. Except when your neighbour blows one at 3 am… that still sucks :(

  7. At this point I’d prefer to see Vuvuzela insertions, instead, and may perform a few myself if this keeps up.

    Dutch broadcaster now just has the noise from the pitch nearly inaudible, and I think they’re doing some simple frequency-based filtering as well.

    Watching a foreign stream meant I could hardly hear the commentators, which is just f’ing ridiculous.

  8. I just did this for Ubuntu Linux 9.10:

    1) sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-equalizer
    2) In Menu > Applications > Sound & Video start PulseAudio Equalizer. End it.
    3) In /home/YOURUSERNAME/.pulse/ open file equalizerrc.
    4) Add 233, 466, 932 and 1864 to the list, at the right place. Save.
    5) Start PulseAudio Equalizer again.
    6) Move the controllers for the above four values down.
    7) Tick “EQ Enabled” and click “Apply Settings”.
    8) DONE. The Vuvuzelas are filtered.

    9) You can even save this setting by typing in a new filter name in the filter drop down list.

    Jan

    P.S.:
    Germany wins!

  9. This has to be the most ridiculous thing ever to have to worry about…Why on Earth did they ever allow those dumb sounding horns to begin with. It’s obviously menacing and is about the same as every single person at the Super Bowl bringing in multiple Air Horns per person and blowing them constantly.

    I bet the players hated it.

  10. @lmanoss: You’re right, the commentary would suffer because they would be saying “Goddamn I hate these imbeciles and their vuvuzelas” and we’d be replying “What vuvuzelas?”

    Frankly I think anyone caught entering a stadium with such a toy should have it forcefully shoved up their rectum. With all the homophobia down there, I think they’d curb the behaviour pretty quick.

  11. I don’t get why the stations themselves aren’t doing it. It isn’t rocket surgery to remove a fucking single tone and all of the damn things run a pretty solid B flat.

    B flat. Bf3 within a few cents +/-. Notch filtering is not a hack.

  12. i live in israel and the wc is streamed on the internet by channel 1 (www.iba.org.il/mondial). The stream is using windows media player so if you have ffdshow installed you only need to apply an equalizer at 200 and 500 Hz down to -20dB and also use FIR filter of type bandpass, 24 taps at a freq of 450 with window type box.

    no more buzzing for me.

  13. why not something like an adaptive LMS filter to cancel out the noise? i’ve seen (well… heard) one remove white-ish noise from a song before. you would never know that there was music in the noise pre-filter and then after, it was crystal clear (after the initial startup transient dies out) to MY (may not be to everyone’s) ears. getting a streaming sample of the noise that is correlated to the noise in the commentator’s speaking shouldn’t be all that hard. i’m guessing/hoping it shouldn’t be that hard to pull off with either a prerecorded sound file of the noise or just put a microphone nearby. IF a noise cancelling adpative filter works, then the wonderful droning will be gone.

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.