Vuvuzelas: las estridentes trompetas que desesperan a las televisiones

Without a doubt, there will be those who love the sound of vuvuzelas but the strident trumpets that have become popular in the World Cup are creating more than a headache for journalists, filmmakers and sound technicians both at HBS, as host broadcaster, and at the rest of the networks around the world that find themselves in the position of attenuating the noise, impoverishing the atmosphere in the broadcast, or maintaining it. In the coming days, the BBC will offer the possibility of muting the ambient sound through the popular “red” button of its digital service, activating the second dual audio channel.

If something is characterizing the World Cup in South Africa, it is the strident sound of thousands of vuvuzelas playing non-stop throughout each match. Although there will be those who enjoy their sound, the truth is that these trumpets are causing more than a headache for journalists, filmmakers and sound technicians both at HBS, as a broadcat host, and at the rest of the networks around the world.

Despite the continuous apologies that the presenters of the different channels usually make at the beginning of each match, broadcasters such as the BBC have seen their switchboards flooded with complaints from viewers. For this reason, the British public has chosen to attenuate the hum of the famous plastic horns by making public in a statement that despite its interest in transmitting the environment in the state as faithfully as possible, in the event that "the vuvuzelas continue to have a great impact on public enjoyment, we will study other options to reduce the volume even further."

In fact, in the coming days the BBC will offer the possibility of muting the ambient sound through the popular “red” button on its digital service, which would activate a second dual channel in which the annoying sound of vuvuzelas would have been eliminated.

For their part, the German companies, ARD and ZDF, have been forced to opt for traditional speech with the microphone in hand to muffle the permanent ambient hum of the vuvuzelas. After trying various systems to reduce the hum in vain and seeing that it cannot simply be eliminated, since it is part of the ambient sound supplied by the Swiss agency Infront, with exclusive rights to FIFA, the announcers have returned to the traditional handheld microphone.

On the part of the host broadcaster, according to some sources, HBS would have asked FIFA to prohibit the entry of vuvuzelas, something that the Federation has refused, considering that it is part of South African society. Curious answer considering that it is precisely the televisions that pay for a large part of the 'football festival'.

Making August in June

Some companies have decided to make their mark early, and so, for example, antivuvuzelafilter.com has launched a campaign for the sale of the “antivuvuzela filter” on the market, intended to eliminate the noise of these gadgets in your “music system, computer, iPod, iPhone, etc.,” as stated on its page.

Vuvuzelas produce a sound at a frequency of 235 hertz, although the real annoyance is produced by harmonics, sounds that are multiples of the original frequency ranging from 470, 700, 940, 1171, 1400 and even 1630 hertz. It is precisely these high frequencies that humans perceive with greater sensitivity and, therefore, are the most irritating.

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