Curve on EDGE interfering with other USB

I did a forum search and didn't see anything quite like this, so here I am.

For some time I've had odd tones popping up when I convert old tapes to digital via a USB box. I tried many things, even swapping out computers, and it would still pop up seemingly at random, ruining a recording. It even came in on my iPod's FM transmitter (powered by a USB-style cable) in the car.

Then on my exercise bike, using my Blackberry, I heard the exact same tones coming out of the bike's speakers. The MP3 player input cable for the bike was coiled up there and as it turns out it was acting as an antenna and the tones exactly coincided with my BB sending or receiving data, and the "note" the tone was "playing" was exactly the same (I think it's a B but I don't have perfect pitch ;) ).

Bingo.

I would always have my BB on the table close at hand when doing recordings, and I'm positive it was causing induction interference over the USB cables (I wasn't savvy enough to buy cables with those coil magnets to prevent such a thing). Now I know to keep my BB far away (or turn it off) when I'm digitizing tapes.

Just throwing that out there in case anyone else has had similar problems. Cheers!

Mine does something like that to my laptop. It makes it have a faint high pitch sqeal sound. Bothers one of my xm radios too.

It didn't pop out at me as the culprit until the bike incident because it didn't interfere with anything else in the house. It was a nice, mellow steady tone for a second or two, followed by several dit-dah-dit patterns, all on the same note, and then it would stop. Tres weird.

Haha, yea it stumped me for a long time until someone else was talking about on here and I started my "testing". It is wierd isnt it.