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Speakers picking up a radio station!! (1 Viewer)

David Hill

Agent
Joined
Feb 1, 2000
Messages
29
Hi,

a simple, but frustrating, problem!

I've added 4 sattelite speakers and a sub-woofer to my PC for when I watch movies there as opposed to my proper HT set-up. You know, when partners have a different idea of what to watch!!

Anyway, I have an old amp that I used to play CDs in my office, so the PC was already hooked into it to provide stereo sound. The new speakers are the type that has a sub-woofer plugged into the headphone socket of a PC (powered amp I guess), with the small speakers coming out of the sub.

OK, I figure, plug the sub-woofer lead into the amp headphone socket and voila! Surround sound! (for cable length reasons I can't plug the sub into the PC).

So far, so good. But, now, even if the PC is turned off, the amp off, the CD off if the speakers are ON, they pick up a strange French radio station, which bugs me. I swear that sometimes listening to quiet music the radio station comes on. I don't even have a radio in the room!!

So guys, someone knowledgeable tell me - how and why is this happening, and more to the point, how can I stop it?!?!?!

Cheers!

David
 

Saurav

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 15, 2001
Messages
2,174
It's called RFI - Radio Frequecy Interference. It's most often picked up by cables, and is more common with interconnects than with speaker cables. Do you have any lengths of cables lying coiled in a loop? If you do, try straightening them out, try moving your cables to change their orientation (you know how a radio antenna's reception changes with orientation), or in the worst case, get better, shielded cables.
 

Jagan Seshadri

Supporting Actor
Joined
Nov 5, 2001
Messages
528
Saurav's advice about getting better cables is good advice for sure.

An alternative to replacing the cables is to pick up some "ferrite clamps" from Radio Shack or a similar electronics supply shop, and clamp them around the cables. These things are sometimes called Radio Frequency Chokes (RFC's) because they choke off radio frequency signals but let the good signals get through.
 

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