Have your speakers ever picked up radio waves?

[merlot]

In the past, my PC speakers would sometimes pick radio traffic. You'd have to pretty much put your ear to the speaker to hear it, but it was there. Normally it sounds like people on 2-way radios, but at this moment my speakers are picking up... Asian music. Like you'd hear at a Chinese or Japanese (hmmmmm, Japanese) restaurant.

 

Any engineers here that would like to explain this phenomenon? (For the smart asses < cough > Bryan < cough >, I'm not talking about the Asian music either )

[Guest Bryan]

Mike,

 

Bairdy spells it B-R-I-A-N.

[Peter O]

I use some junky speakers for my PC and have had that happen in the past. (For critical listening at my PC I use high-end headphones).

 

I believe the very thin-gauge wire acts as an antenna and by chance happens to be tuned to the frequency of radio station. I was picking up Canadian radio with my speakers.

 

Pick up a "ferrite core" at Radio Shack and wrap the cable coming out of the PC around the core 4 or 5 times. This will block the interference.

[reeldeal]

this happens in my computer speakers all the time, i don't know if it's a radio station or what i'm picking up. it's not at all well defined and i have to put my ear right up to it to hear anything.

[scobeto]

We've got some intercom speakers at work that pick up what I believe are Nextel conversations and broadcast them all over the place

[Kain rising]

This happens with my infrared wireless speakers at times....

[Orpheus]

we used to get the nearby drive throughs on the old Sansui quadraphonic receiver we had in the shop... too bad my NAD doesn't pick those up

[Mark E]

Never had that problem with speakers, but my teeth pick up stuff all the time :green:

[merlot]

Originally posted by Odie@Mar 31 2004, 08:28 PM

Pick up a "ferrite core" at Radio Shack and wrap the cable coming out of the PC around the core 4 or 5 times. This will block the interference.

Thanks Odie, I'll give that a try.

[Carlucci]

My Xbox picks up some little martian sounding dudes when it's in the dashboard.

 

 

Seriously, this really freaked me out the first time I heard it.

 

Carlos.

[Covak]

You'd have to pretty much put your ear to the speaker to hear it, but it was there. Normally it sounds like people on 2-way radios

 

The day I saw Sixth Sense, when I went to bed I swore I could hear some really faint voices. I rolled over and said to myself "It's just yer brain playin with you after that movie." But then a minute later I heard the voices again, and I got a little freaked because I was positive the sound was not only real, but coming from some odd location right in the middle of my room (but it was intermittent and hard to locate). I got out of bed, kneeling on the floor, and cautiously crawled forward a bit, right into the middle of my crummy old 4-speaker PC sound system. The voices came back and it sounded like it was coming from all around. I dang near pissed my pants, but I realized what was going on a split second before that happened

 

It was some radio communications between train conductors coming in ever so faintly (had to press my ear to a speaker to understand anything). Took me a bit longer than normal to fall asleep that night

 

I had a similar incident after seeing The Mothman Prophecies. When my PC is left on at night there just happen to be two little red lights at opposite ends of the table, across the room from my bed...

[rustyjaw]

I bought a really cheap phone at Costco once that picked up mexican radio.