University News Last updated 05 July 2010
It may be too late for England fans but a Birmingham City University computer expert has found a way of cancelling out the sound of vuvuzela horns during the remaining World Cup games.
Mathew Randall, a computer expert from Birmingham City University, has discovered that by linking up a TV to a computer football fans can watch games without the annoying honk of the horns.
Mathew, who is a Senior Lecturer Digital Media Technology, in the University’s Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment said: “It’s down to the frequencies that the vuvuzelas work at. If a horn is placed very near to a microphone then the sound will be difficult to eliminate but if it’s further away then the sound will be easier to filter out.”
If you want to watch the remaining World Cup games without the drone of the horns then try this:
- Plug you telly or freeview box into the mic jack on your pc or Mac.
- Plug the speaker or headphones jack into the aux on your stereo or computer speakers.
- Click here to download the software.
- Start the runtime and open the attached file in it.
- It should pick up settings automatically, but click ‘change audio settings’ to select sound card if required. You may also need to go into your audio settings to set-up audio inputs so that you are recording the mic input, you will also want to turn off microphone booster if your audio is distorted through clipping (these settings can be accesses on windows XP through the control panel, selecting Sound and Audio Devices and selecting the Audio tab).
- Simply move the slider to define how aggressive you want the filter to be, the more aggressive the filter is the more horns are filtered, but this will filter or distort other sounds.