800-221-1212 and Clicking Speakers

The speakers currently in use on my computer, which in Stoughton were hooked to Deb’s, have always had a problem with static clicks.  They pick up some kind of signal from somewhere and click.  Sometimes a lot.  It’s highly annoying.

We’d not noticed it much since putting them on my machine recently, but in the past couple days it got bad.

In the past couple days, my prepaid Verizon cell phone, a Kyocera going on four years old, started getting repeated calls from 800-221-1212, a number alien to me.  It appears to be associated with one or more airline reservation systems.  They hang up after a couple rings or if I pick up.

The speakers pre-announce the incoming call.

That’s right.  In the second or so before the cell phone rings, the speakers crackle!  Then they continue to crackle through a moment after the call stops.

Apparently the cell phone is putting out RF enough to interfere as it… communicates out?  Back to the cell tower?  In the process of handling the call transaction.  Weird.

1. weird indeed.  Huh.

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  06/16  at  12:38 AM

2. There is a bit of communication between the mobile unit and the base station while the call is being set up. I’m not sure of the details of this on a CDMA network, nor am I sure what Verison is running in your market, but GSM phones transmit at full power until the call is established, and then step the power down (to save battery) until the base station signals it is at working minimum.

   In other words, yes.

   Posted by triticale  on  06/16  at  01:18 AM

3. That is indeed weird.

   Tritical - at least I understood those last 4 words.

   Posted by Bogie  on  06/16  at  06:32 AM

4. My Motorola cell phone from Nextel does the same thing with the CD player in my car and pretty much anything with speakers if it is nearby.

   I stopped setting the phone on the dash to recharge when I realized that was the cause of the occasional skip in the CD. It wasn’t actually skipping the CD, but the click was overplaying through the speakers.

   Weird, indeed.

   Posted by jen  on  06/16  at  11:08 AM

5. Ok, that might explain the skipping ipod when I have it in the car.....

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  06/16  at  01:28 PM

6. Happens here too...at the computer speakers and in the car.  I have a LG phone from Cingular.  And all this time I thought it was just me!

   Posted by Sharon  on  06/16  at  04:20 PM

7. The RF from the phone is coupling into the speakers via the speaker leads. Quite possible the RF is making it into the final amplifier stage(s) of the sound card/speaker/cd player/etc. Unless you can find a way to decouple the RF, your probably going to have to live with it. Usually some ferrites or toroids on the lead between the sound card and the speakers does the trick.

   Posted by DCE  on  06/16  at  09:29 PM

8. I used to have this problem a lot with a Cingular phone.  I could tell when a call was coming in because the speaker in my (wired) speakerphone would start clicking, humming, and popping.  It took me a while to figure out what it was.  At first I began to wonder if my office phone was haunted or something. 

   I haven’t had it lately with the Verizon phone, but I do hear it from other people when I’m on conference calls these days.

   I’ve also had it induce a hum into my truck’s audio system, although it’s never caused a CD to skip.  But it only does this when I’ve put the phone in the cubby-hole in the dash.

   One other interesting thing I learned about cellphones a while back… Apparently, some Sprint phones will cause my radar detector to sense an X-band signal when they’re out of tower range.  We were out in the Texas Panhandle, between Dalhart and Texline where there was no Sprint service at the time, so my friend’s phone would occasionally emit a strong enough signal that it activated the radar detector.  It drove me nuts until I figured out what it was (my detector has a directional indicator, and it kept showing the signal was behind it, which eventually clued me to the fact that his phone was sitting on the center console).

   Posted by Aubrey Turner  on  06/21  at  04:08 PM

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