External speakers picking up someone else's music

i cant help with your problem but i have had a very similar one with my coby surround sound system...i had some of the cables crossed wrong and suddenly was getting radio disney AM on one speaker (i think it was the closest AM tower).
so actually, iwould be very interested ina n explanation for this too.
-carly

The main problem is that you are using unbalance cables for the audio from the mac to the speakers, 2 core cables use a common earth and negative lead, and are suseptible to RF (radio frequency) interference. Balanced cable uses 3 cores, a +, - and a separate earth/screen, it is much better at rejecting RF.

You don't have a choice in the cabling unfortunately, and the remedy is to get the speaker amp to earth the audio signals through the Mac, not seperately, you have an earth issue when you connect the Mac and the speakers to a common earth, (your mains iin this case), the remedy in the studio would be to drop the earth from the signal cables connecting the speakers to the Mac, this may be impractical in your situation, but it explains why the problem vanishes when you disconnect the unit.

You might want to check the earthing in your home, as this is where the problem stems from, check the connections in your multi-power board, and in the plugs, then see if you can find the main earth to the building and see if it's OK.

Dropping the mains earth off one or other unit would also work, but is very dangerous, as it leaves you open to shocks.

In the above post, if anyone is confused, what he refers to as "earth" is commonly known as grounding.

Originally posted by crazzyeddie
In the above post, if anyone is confused, what he refers to as "earth" is commonly known as grounding.

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The British have a language all their own, don't they.

Originally posted by crazzyeddie
In the above post, if anyone is confused, what he refers to as "earth" is commonly known as grounding.

Click to expand...

That was actually the only thing I understood

That happened a while ago with a guitar amp, it was playing radio without having anything plugged into it. It was pretty cool. It would really suck to have it in your fancy computer speakers though. This was just a crappy practice amp that some people were using in the basement.

Originally posted by rjrufo
The British have a language all their own, don't they.

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Yes, it's the one we loaned to you lot, and now it's all busted up and bent out of shape

Thanks crazzyeddie for the assist.

I have a similar yet differnt issuem which isn't really an issue. If I swith to CD imput on my 20 year old NAD amp and crank the volume I can start to softly hear the music comming in over the Tape imput (computer.) Not sure why it happens but only occurs at extremly high volumes, hence isn't really an issue.

This is known as electronic cross-over or sometimes bleed-through, high levels of signal through older systems tend to wander about a bit as the sheilding on the older systems was either a bit lacking to start with or again has been compromised in the earthing (grounding!) due to oxidation in the contacts amongst other things.

Earth is a very important part of any audio system, get it wrong and all kinds of weird sh*t happens.

It also plays a major role in the sound of a system, as does the power supply, but that's a horse of a different colour.

Originally posted by rjrufo
The British have a language all their own, don't they.

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Um, actually the British have ENGLISH, and created, developed and refined it over many many centuries before "passing it along" to us here in N. America - we're the ones who have screwed it all up.

Screw it we made sense of it. Bollocks? The Dogs bollocks? what the hell is that?

Originally posted by Macpoops
Screw it we made sense of it. Bollocks? The Dogs bollocks? what the hell is that?

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Or what about a flat? Isn't that an appartment or something? But then again, why do we call it an appartment when they're all together?

There are several others that I can't think of at the moment because I've had too much eggnog.

Anyway, I hope everyone had - or is having - a great Christmas.

Originally posted by Macpoops
Screw it we made sense of it. Bollocks? The Dogs bollocks? what the hell is that?

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Yeah, you made sense of it alright

The reason English (The Queen's Version) is so difficult is to oppress the populations of the colonies even further when they have to learn it

English is the worst language in the world to learn as a foreign language, QE or American.

At least I get some Idea of what our Atlantic cousins are talking about.

Obviously you don't know what the dogs bollocks is about, it decribes being the absolute best, something you'd know precious little about

Ambrose Chapel:

You'll always get a better sound out of a proper set of hifi speakers, cables are a nuisance, but good audio is worth it.

So wait? Bollocks is bad? and the Dogs Bollocks is the best? One thing i do love that happens to be english, Rugby. Now thats a mans game. More manly then anything we have here in the states, our Football is a close second but hell we wear lots pads and take too many breaks.

Thank god for the English!

I mean TVR, Caterham, Westfield, Aston, Ariel, Morgan, come on! ;-)

Originally posted by Macpoops
So wait? Bollocks is bad? and the Dogs Bollocks is the best? One thing i do love that happens to be english, Rugby. Now thats a mans game. More manly then anything we have here in the states, our Football is a close second but hell we wear lots pads and take too many breaks.

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I think I should work some equations out to find out who hits harder...

johnnowak: Don't forget McLaren! Or Jaguar, I mean really, who names crap after a cat?

Ehh i think football might have slightly harder collisions just because of the objective. In my experiance with rugby your not just trying to run through a man most of the time your turning your body or going to ground when you go into contact. Even on defense your trying to hold the man up most of the time. In football you always trying to get the man down on D or even on O in some times.

But then there's Larry Allen I would hate to get hit by him.

Okay, so what was the subject of this thread?

The subject: Hm... Bri... Engla.... oh yeah, some speakers having grounding issues.

Originally posted by Wes
The subject: Hm... Bri... Engla.... oh yeah, some speakers having grounding issues.

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Right, thought so. Alright, thanks, carry on then!