Okay you techies! I have a matter of curiosity.

Recently after turning off my computer, but not the surge protector, I heard this odd little sound. I first wondered if there was some rodent living in my desk drawer, but upon further investigation, I realized it was one of my speakers.

ONE of my speakers is picking up a radio signal. I held the little thing up to my ear and listened to part of the news. XP Now how is it picking up a signal like that?

Unless it's storming, I usually don't turn off the surge protector (probably bad, but whatever), so since the speakers are seperate from my monitor, they are still getting power. Yet out of two speakers and the subwoofer, only one is picking up that signal.

And it was actually annoying last night, because it must've gotten louder. I could hear it while I was trying to sleep, and my bed is on the opposite side of the room. o_0

The only outside influence I can think of is that there are people working on the roof, and maybe something they have on the site is pulling in a signal...

But why would the speaker pick it up? o_0

well one reason, it's power by electricity, secondly, it's got wires. If i'm not mistaken, you can catch radio waves!! I was watching mythbusters yesterday on TLC, and they were showing how to pick up radio waves with 100ft of wire. But i guess somehow you get better reception!!

Simarly, I built an AM radio out of a coiled wire, and it had a little piece of metal attached to it with an ear piece. Instead of picking up far off sounds, I heard the most powerful FM broadcaster in my area. I believe the thing is caused when 2 metals are in contact that are different, it creates a voltage.
My guess is that by having the speakers getting power, its amplifying whatever signal its getting from the air.

Yeah, I have had the same in the past with some cheap-o speakers... but now I got a (now old) 5.1 system, it has not been a problem.

Could then also be down to quality/age of the speakers too.

Do you know what kind of speakers they are?


Heh, I saw that Mythbuster episode!

Cambridge Soundworks, if that matters any. They are kinda old. I've had them at least since Fall in 2000. But they still work good enough as far as I'm concerned. XB

<3 subwoofer(sp?)

It was funny when the guy peed on an electric fence....

And, Hatch is absolutely right... In reality, all metal attracts the waves, and thus they can transfer then, but the voltage causes the waves attraction to increase thus sending the signal in an audiable tone to your speaker....

A similar thing happened to me when I was little, picked up radio signals on a set of walkie talkies.

Although it's never happened on my speakers, they just start squealing whenever I get a phone call or text message on my mobile (or cell phone to you Americans T_T).

We built little FM radio broadcasters at school, the microphone sends out sound to any FM radio set on a certain frequency within about a 30m radius. Wonder if I could get it working on my speakers.. Meh.

Most modern cordless phones run on like 2-7ghz frequency. Keep em away from electronics! Hehe. They are known to cause just that kind of interference. I don't know how they get past the FCC....


I've also seen this guy driving a truck with a sign on the back (it was a pickup) that said like tune to 92.5... and there was an antenna sticking out of it. A mobile FM radio station!

You can do the same thing with an Ipod (and an Itrip? Iunno), with a couple of adjustments. But it's more for when someone is using a radio, you scan through the radio stations on your Ipod, find the station they're listening to, and then play an mp3 through it, or have audio coming straight from a microphone just to annoy them.
Limited range, but still cool.

And then if you can boost the range you can create an illegal broadcast station. Fun.

i have the same thing with my walkie talkies like capitila but i just gopt faint an scrambled sounds and weird noises how can i get it to receive better signals???

I'm pretty sure that my reception had something to do with the scaffolding that the roofers set up. Now that it's been moved, I'm not getting anything...

XD Scaffolding antenna!

Well at least now you can sleep.. Around here anything on the radio past 11 o'clock is quite pathetic anyway.

We used to try standing in specific spots, or pointing it at antennas.

My old speakers used to do that do, I freak out when it does but its only for a few seconds..