I was on my laptop watching a show and I paused to look something up and since there was no sound I could hear a voice talking. It sounded distorted like it was coming over a radio and I couldn't make out what was saying. There does not appear to be any unusual process running on the laptop. As I listen more it sounds like the man is having a whole conversation with someone else. There is a truck stop right by their house. Is it possible that my laptop is picking up a CB radio frequency?
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Yes, very strong radio signals can be picked up by just about any device with a speaker and a transistor in it. The transistor acts as a rectifier, forming a crude envelope detector. Amplitude modulated voice can be heard quite clearly, single-sideband modulated voice is quite garbled but often still somewhat intelligible.
No cause for alarm: it won't damage your laptop and it's nothing malicious going on. Probably just some trucker with an illegal CB amplifier.
Phil Frost - W8II
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