MG Blog

If you find hard to tolerate the vuvuzelas constantly playing below the World Cup’s matches, there is a solution.

According to isophonic.net, this instrument plays a note about 230-235 Hertz (roughly the B-flat below middle C). So we can apply a notch filter on the fundamental frequency and the first harmonic (460-470) to greatly reduce the buzz. Listen to the before and after audio to confirm that it has indeed worked: you can still hear the horns, because the higher partials are intact, but they aren’t so loud. (Note that the effect takes a couple of seconds to work, at the start of the “after” sample.)

People at isophonic.net has created a VST plugin for windows and a LADSPA plugin for Mac OS/X that makes the job. Download from isophonic.net page.

The LADSPA plugin should work on Linux also, but we can do the same work using jack-rack. Here there are instructions that works on any linux box with jack and jack-rack.

But the real solution is to love the vuvuzelas. As John Cage argues:

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.