Originally posted by Gunslinger
This is weird but not improbable.....we used to call this PFM when I was in the RADAR biz. I'm just wondering what is actually demodulateing the signal. A bare wire will work as an antenna, but like somone said You'd still have to demodulate the "audio" from the carrier signal. To do that you'd need some sort of clock signal or crystal. Like i said PFM.....Pure ***** Magic
An "envelope detector" is a very simple AM demodulator. In fact, it consists of just three components (i.e., a diode in series with a parallel resistor/capacitor combination) that could well be found on some circuitry in a monitor, on a motherboard, or on plug-in card. With an envelope detector, the signal extraction is done without downmixing the signal, so no crystals or frequency tuning circuitry (e.g., tank circuit) is needed. There may be a similarly simple way to extract the modulating signal from an FM signal, but I'm not aware of any. I know that there are methods for receiving FM signals without tuners, but I don't know of any as simple as an AM envelope detector.
If the radio station is broadcast in FM, I suspect that what you've picked up is crosstalk over your telephone line that originates with a baseband feed from the radio station to its broadcast point. This happened to my parents all of the time: they could hear the signal of a station that was broadcast near their home over their phone lines. It was FM and I'm sure that it was not being demodulated. Thus, I suspect baseband crosstalk. I experience a similar thing at home when I have my CD player running at the same time I am watching TV. Audio from both devices feeds the same amp, and I get crosstalk due to the proximity and poor shielding of the cables. That is, I can hear the CD player while I am listening to the TV signal through my amp. In your case, I'd suspect that you're picking up the crosstalk through your modem and the sound is coming from the modem speaker (the same thing that makes the annoying noise when your modem negotiates a connection with another modem).
Just a guess.
- JNOV