With the recent arrest of an Italian man for firing a rifle into the air and then ramming a public bar with his car, and the earlier arrest of a man for the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old boy in Durban, you can’t deny that the sound of vuvuzela trumpets – wherever they are played – has had an impact beyond that of celebrating football in South Africa (including broadcast complications). It's been dubbed 'vuvuzela rage' by some of the popular press.
During the recent FIFA World Cup tournament, they became a regular talking point among players and fans, as well as broadcasters, who all complained about the noise from the horns. France team captain Patrice Evra and Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo both said that the noise drowned out players’ calls. ‘It is difficult for anyone on the pitch to concentrate,’ Ronaldo told a press conference. ‘A lot of players don't like them, but they are going to have to get used to them.’ Or not, as English Premier League side Tottenham recently became the first league club to ban vuvuzelas from its stadium, followed quickly by Arsenal.
It took broadcasters a while to work out how best to approach the Vuvuzela Chorus. Their hallelujah moment was provided by simply notching out the offending noise. ‘Lawo’s console EQ was extremely helpful in the creation of signals with reduced interference from the vuvuzelas,’ said Carsten Higler, Technical Director at ARD, the German public national radio and TV network.
Before taming the noise, the prevailing approach of most broadcasters was to treat the vuvuzela in the same way as the usual crowd noise. This often meant ‘ducking’ it underneath the match commentary – with some pretty unpleasant results.
During the mid eighties, I interviewed Japan frontman David Sylvian. It was a big interview – for the magazine whose front cover it was destined to grace, for me as a ‘prestige’ interview and for the amount of cassette tape it required. The interview took place during summer, in a London hotel room. It was hot; the window was open. We talked at length about music, recording, technology, make-up... and I failed to register the roadworks somewhere outside.
The transcription took me two days, during which I struggled to extract the interview from the sound of a road drill that the recorder's automatic level control sucked up to the same level every time there was a pause in the conversation. The ALC ‘pumped’ like hell and it was the last time I ever used it for an interview.
But not so our sports broadcasters, many of which continue to believe that a consistent audio level is more desirable than maintaining a level difference between sports ambience and commentary. It’s bad news at home, but even worse in the average sports bar, where the television volume is much higher.
Any broadcasters care to fight their corner here?
