Vikings won't go quietly in Metrodome

Think of the loudest event you've ever attended.

A Metallica concert? A monster-truck rally?

Bike Week in Daytona Beach?

Please, that's kid stuff.

Now imagine that noise sustained for three hours and you have football at the charming Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, where hearing goes to die and where the Ravens play the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.

Hey, Joe Flacco: Good luck calling signals when thousands of beer-swilling Vikings fans get wound up and the noise literally bounces off the Teflon-coated roof and around the tight concrete wasteland below.

"If we're standing on the sidelines and our heads are within a foot of each other and I tell you, 'Watch the blitz on the left side,' there's no chance you'll hear me," said Kevin Byrne, the Ravens' media guru.

Byrne has been around the NFL since 1977. He has been in every stadium multiple times. And he rates the Metrodome as the second-loudest stadium in the league.

No. 1? The old Kingdome in Seattle, where they might as well have passed out Kleenex so you could mop up when your ears bled.

But the Metrodome represents its own unique torture for opposing teams.

Noise levels during games have measured as high as 125 decibels. That's right up there with an airliner taking off.

It's also flirting with the pain threshold for most humans. Any sound above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss.

One-hundred twenty-five decibels - that's more painful than watching a Brett Favre Wrangler jeans commercial.

"It's not a secret. It's a loud place," said Ravens center Matt Birk, who played 11 seasons for the Vikings.

Birk, a six-time Pro Bowl player, saw plenty of teams come into the Metrodome and unravel in the unrelenting noise.

"Certainly, if it's something you don't prepare for, you're not ready for, it's going to be a huge disadvantage for you," he said. "I've seen it firsthand many times. We'll be ready for it, though."

In a moment, we'll get to see how the Ravens prepare for this kind of noise.

But here's another thing you should know: It's not just crowd noise that makes the Metrodome so deafening.

No, the Vikings also feel the need to pump all sorts of other artificial noises over their sound system, just to drive opposing teams even more nuts.

Take the guy in the Vikings get-up who sounds that huge horn - it's technically called a Gjallarhorn - after a big play.