First, skip the purported vuvuzela "filter." One apparent quick fix getting media attention promises to kill the noise of the vuvuzela using "phase cancellation." The makers of the Anti-Vuvuzela Filter (which costs about $3.50) instruct users to play the downloadable MP3 alongside their TVs speakers. "Depending on the circumstances" says the sale site, "the resulting soundwave may be so faint as to be inaudible to human ears." In our test, the noise just became twice as irritating.

Instead, go into your TVs sound settings and turn the treble all the way down. It won't eliminate the vuvuzelas, but it tones down their highest-pitch, buzzsaw-in-the-brain frequencies.

Some TVs with more advanced sound controls have equalizers that let you adjust various soundwave frequencies. Playing with them might bring the vuvuzela decibels down, though perhaps at the expense of hearing the commentators a bit less well.

If you have your TV hooked up to a surround sound system, one of our testers found that he could almost eliminate the vuvuzelas by lowering the volume of the left and right speakers (which carry crowd noises) and pumping up the volume of the center speaker (which carries the commentators' voices) via his sound system's settings menu.

There is, as a last resort, the mute button. Despite their horrendous sound, many of us here have found that concentrating on the game itself makes the vuvuzelas far less of a nuisance.

—Nick K. Mandle