• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

Proposal: Allowing audio equipment during official attempts

Do you think audio equipment should be allowed?


  • Total voters
    74

Sajwo

Member
Joined
Sep 25, 2011
Messages
1,002
Location
Poland
WCA
2012SZEW01
YouTube
Visit Channel
My proposal is to allow listening to the music during official attempts. I don't really see any reason why it is forbidden - it helps competitors to handle the pressure better. Some of the people may even have better results with that possibility.


I also think that we can all agree with one thing - a spectator and a competitor, both with bluetooth earplugs and communicating with each other would be a completely ridiculous situation and that probably wouldn't ever happen, because it's very inefficient for the competitor.

I think it should be forbidden though for the following events (obvious reasons):
- MBLD
- 3BLD
- 4BLD
- 5BLD
- FMC
 

turtwig

Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2015
Messages
656
I also think that we can all agree with one thing - a spectator and a competitor, both with bluetooth earplugs and communicating with each other would be a completely ridiculous situation and that probably wouldn't ever happen, because it's very inefficient for the competitor.

Is this the reason for the rule? Anyway, I don't think we should change it. It's basically impossible to regulate what someone can play on their earplugs, so there'll be a lot of possibilities of cheating. Maybe they won't communicate with someone else, but they can listen to other things, for example, maybe they don't know OLL parity and they play a audio file that recites it to them. I guess this example and a lot of other things we can think of are not very plausible, but if the rule is changed some competitors might think of much more clever ways to cheat world records or prestigious titles that we haven't thought of yet - there's a lot of money involved in breaking records/winning big comps so I think it's totally possible.
 

One Wheel

Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
2,883
Location
Wisconsin
WCA
2016BAIR04
Personally, I find I'm slower when listening to music. I could see white noise being helpful in a loud environment, though.

I don't see listening to algs being helpful. Maybe for memorizing them in the first place, but it would be difficult to follow and slow for a competition.
 

WACWCA

Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2015
Messages
728
Location
Maryland
WCA
2012CALL01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I definitely agree with ender9994, and as for competitors communicating, I do think that it would be a possible advantage, because they could say what cross or side to solve.
 

DGCubes

Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2014
Messages
1,823
Location
Over there
WCA
2013GOOD01
YouTube
Visit Channel
Define music. What if my favorite song happens to have the lyrics, "R U R' U' R' F R2 U' R' U' R U R' F'?" If this were to be allowed, the judges/delegates would have to check what you're listening to beforehand, and there are ways to get around that anyway (e.g. by naming your alg-track "Shake It Off.mp3"). So this would mean that they'd have to actually listen to the songs themselves, which could STILL be altered and have algorithms or other information hidden inside them near the end. If I have a ten hour long playlist and want to listen to it while competing, a judge or delegate would theoretically have to listen to the entire thing before letting me solve, if we want to be positive I'm not cheating.

As far as it possibly helping people to deal with stress, here's my personal stance on that:
Part of a competition for anything, not just cubing, is dealing with stress. If you are unable to deal with stress and get bad official times because of that, you should set aside time outside of competitions to learn how to handle stress. If some hypothetical person who averages sub-6 at home fails every competition and gets 10 second averages, they obviously can't handle the stress and don't deserve the win.

We've been doing it without music this whole time, and the people who truly deserve the good times (those who are fast AND can handle competition stress) have still been getting them. I really don't see music as practical or necessary in cubing competitions.
 

Matt11111

Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,370
Location
Probably my room
WCA
2014PINN02
YouTube
Visit Channel
I go through the thread so far and I see many ways this rule could be destroyed by loopholes. Technology is wonderful and all, but the fact that you can change the name of an .mp3 file to a popular song or make a really long playlist with algs hidden in them (as DG said), they can remain completely oblivious to the amount of time they've been inspecting because headphones (as Ender said), and there isn't really any sport where you CAN listen to music anyway (as APdRF said). (By the way, only now do I realize that this isn't even a full sentence. Oh well.)

We've seen that phones have been a problem in competitions before, when a guy had a web page of algs on his phone during an FMC solve. So what's stopping someone from composing some music in MuseScore or something (great program, by the way), singing algorithms over it while eating soup or something to that music, putting it on their phone to listen to during a solve, and calling it TotallyNotSquanAlgs.mp3?

Perhaps for those people who want to listen to music, the judge should plug their phone into a massive speaker for everyone to hear all the wonderful algs they put into song form just tell them this thread exists, so they can see all the cons, loopholes, and such.
 
Last edited:

Chree

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2013
Messages
1,233
Location
Portland, OR, USA
WCA
2013BROT01
YouTube
Visit Channel
There are some regulations that are in place simply to err on the side of caution. If it's possible that a lax reg could result in cheating, it must be made more strict.

Most of the example situations I've seen on this thread could be seen as either an advantage or a disadvantage to the "cheating" cuber. For instance, your audio track is reciting a T perm, but what you get is a G perm. The metronome or similarly tempo'ed track causes you to solve slower than you would have otherwise.

Either way, @ender9994 sealed the fate of this proposal in the very first response. And it's the most likely reason the reg is there in the first place. Miscommunication between the judge and the competitor has to be avoided. We can't expect the judge to yell through a competitors headphones and possibly disturb other cubers. And we surely can't excuse a competitors from missing a call for "12 seconds" when they chose to wear headphones. And the easiest way to mitigate those very possible outcomes to simply keep the ban in place.
 

EMI

Member
Joined
Apr 23, 2011
Messages
848
Location
Germany
WCA
2011RHEI01
YouTube
Visit Channel
Either way, @ender9994 sealed the fate of this proposal in the very first response. And it's the most likely reason the reg is there in the first place. Miscommunication between the judge and the competitor has to be avoided. We can't expect the judge to yell through a competitors headphones and possibly disturb other cubers. And we surely can't excuse a competitors from missing a call for "12 seconds" when they chose to wear headphones. And the easiest way to mitigate those very possible outcomes to simply keep the ban in place.

That's clearly not the reason, because you are allowed to wear earmuffs during solves: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#2i1b
 

tseitsei

Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
1,374
Location
Tampere, Finland
WCA
2012LEHT01
My first thought while reading this was those 2 guys from these forums who did awesome teamBLD UWRs (they were able to sub-10 teamBLD solves IIRC so it was quite effective) and had some kind of an efficient code for that (don't remember their names sorry). The code included different triggers and names for OLL cases and stuff like that.

And then I thought of the following situation:
Person A and B both know that code (or any other similar code).
Person A finishes his last solve and gets a PLL skip on that solve.
Person A goes to another room (he can say that he is going in to a toilet or whatever) and quickly reconstructs his last solve with PLL skip
Person A then connects to the headphones of person B (who still hasn't done his 5th solve) and is now quickly and efficiently able to tell what person B needs to do in order to get a PLL skip on that scramble.

May be a little far fetched but that is what I first thought.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2014
Messages
3,312
Location
Ottawa, Canada
WCA
2015MANS03
YouTube
Visit Channel
At first, I thought this regulation was dumb and was overly paranoid of people cheating, but after reading the replies on this thread, I can see how this could be an issue. I would still like to be able to listen to music while solving, but I don't think there's any way to make sure people don't cheat unless the judge listens to it through 1 ear bud and the competitor gets the other (which would be very funny but effective, however this is ridiculous to look at and judges would hesitate because of sanitary reasons). I think my solution is to just listen to music while waiting between solves, then take the ear buds out as I say "ready" (demonstration visible in my 8.98 official winning 3x3 average video).
 

Matt11111

Member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,370
Location
Probably my room
WCA
2014PINN02
YouTube
Visit Channel
At first, I thought this regulation was dumb and was overly paranoid of people cheating, but after reading the replies on this thread, I can see how this could be an issue. I would still like to be able to listen to music while solving, but I don't think there's any way to make sure people don't cheat unless the judge listens to it through 1 ear bud and the competitor gets the other (which would be very funny but effective, however this is ridiculous to look at and judges would hesitate because of sanitary reasons). I think my solution is to just listen to music while waiting between solves, then take the ear buds out as I say "ready" (demonstration visible in my 8.98 official winning 3x3 average video).
I was going to mention the "you-get-one-earbud-and-the-judge-gets-the-other" idea in a post of my own, but like you said, it's ridiculous and unsanitary, yet effective. Sorry, germaphobes
 

tx789

Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2010
Messages
2,009
Location
New Zealand
WCA
2010HUNT02
YouTube
Visit Channel
People should never be allowed to listen to music during offical attempts. If they can't handle pressure too bad. People aren't allowed to wear headphones during sport events (and you would want too for some sports), I know cuing isn't sport(this isn't the place for argument) but it is still a competitive activity. I just think this is a silly suggestion.
 

DTCuber

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2015
Messages
328
It is an interesting proposal. I do not know how practical it is, however. The regulations would be tough to enforce.

Since the original intention is to relieve stress and help with the pressure of competing, I do not really think audio equipment is warranted because the pressure is part of speedcubing.
 

Chree

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2013
Messages
1,233
Location
Portland, OR, USA
WCA
2013BROT01
YouTube
Visit Channel
That's clearly not the reason, because you are allowed to wear earmuffs during solves: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#2i1b

I stand corrected.

It could still play a part, though. I've never worn a pear of earmuffs where I couldn't still hear things very close to me (say, a judge, for instance). For this reason, Having music playing over something blocking my ears would do a much better job at preventing me from hearing the judge. Moreso, if the lyrics of the song happen to be the phrase "12 seconds" over and over and over again.
 
Last edited:
Top