DCU lecturer finds way to 'silence' vuvuzela

15 June 2010

Dr Sean Marlow

So you’ve started watching the World Cup in South Africa, you're enjoying the games, but the thing that's spoiling it for many are those vuvuzelas. Until FIFA gets around to banning them, there is another way of reducing the sound on your television.  Dr Sean Marlow, lecturer in DCU's School of Engineering, tells us how.

Marlow Method A
[for TV with a good sound equaliser]
Step 1: enter the sound settings for your TV, find the equaliser.
Step 2: drop the 233Hz [or closest] channel (which Samsung TVs have, second from left), and raise the adjacent levels.
Step 3: save as a custom setup (if you can).
Repeat for 466, 932 and 1864Hz

We gave it a try on a Samsung TV, and while it doesn't remove the vuvuzela noise completely, it does tone it down. It also takes some of the depth out of the commentary, as voices sound less rounded and full bodied, perhaps no bad thing.

The settings should work on most TVs where you can make changes to the sound levels in this way, but if they don't on your television you do have another option.

Marlow Method B:
Play the sound through your PC sound card. Run the free program Audacity and set up notch [cancellation] filters at frequencies 233, 466, 932 and 1864Hz
This could be done by broadcasters.