Tech People: Please tell me there is a logical explanation for this... I'm freaking out here.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch. I was suddenly awoken by a female voice coming loud and clear through the sound system for my TV and/or sound bar for just a sentence or so. From what little I caught, it sounded like an audio book. Half out of it, I fumbled with the remote checking as best I could that both the TV, sound bar, DVD, etc were off. Groggy, I fell back asleep on the couch. Some time later I was awoken again by the same female 'audio book' voice, going much longer this time. It cut in and out a bit too. Much more alert, I checked once again that the TV, sound bar and everything were all off, and that my phone and my wife's phones were not bluetoothed to the sound bar. No new electronic equipment in the house. It's not terribly uncommon for me to be up that late, but it's the first time that this has EVER happened. After triple checking every possible point of entry on the house, I went to bed and managed to eventually coax myself back to sleep. 

This morning, telling my wife about it, she asked the question I had been asking myself. "Are you sure you didn't just dream it?" Admittedly, after the rest of a full nights sleep in my bed, had it only been the earlier occurrence I might have been able to convince myself it was just a dream. But the second one woke me fully while while she was still talking and I didn't just fall back asleep after it. 

Fast forward to just a little while ago. Not having fallen asleep at all. I had recently finished watching some TV and turned it off. I was just sitting on the couch using the computer... And there she was again. The same voice. Despite the shocking unexpectedness and briefness of it, being fully awake and alert this time I was able to catch most of what she said. Basically just one sentence describing something to the effect of a "tuxedoed man with slicked back hair and rosy lips". Once again, I verified that the TV, sound bar, and everything else were all OFF. My wife listens to plenty of audio books, but her phone is within arms reach of me and the bluetooth is off. My phone the bluetooth is on but not connected to anything, the sound bar doesn't show up (because it's off) and there's nothing on it that could do this. Since everything is off, it's hard to say for sure, but the fullness of the sound is indicating to me that it's coming from the sound bar and not just the TV.

While typing this out, the second occurrence happened all over again just now too. It almost seems like the same exact part of whatever she's reading, same length, same choppiness and everything, and happening at about the same time of night. Thinking (fearing) this might happen, I had my phone ready to record video. I managed to catch at least half of it.

 https://photos.app.goo.gl/KYUvqPLMx3TuVuJN9

Sorry, without direct video uploads, I don't know where else to host it. Hopefully the link is accessible as it should be.

Please, somebody who knows more about this crap than me tell me that you have a logical explanation for what is happening here and how to put an end to it... I'd really like to be able to sleep again.

Sounds like a neighbor has connected to your sound bar.       Bluetooth can be reached quite a distance under the right conditions

In reply to Grtechguy :

Even though it's turned off?

This is how it starts when Skynet first becomes self aware. 

Is it connected to the TV via optical, HDMI arc or wirelessly?  We get a lot of complaints about "soundbar turns on in the middle of the night."  Often, it's the  smart TV doing a check for firmware updates, updating channel listings etc in the background. The optical port on some  TVs goes active when this happens but the display is off. 

Also, is it a "smart" soundbar that's wifi connected or has a digital assistant (Alexa, etc) built in? Those also do background firmware update checks automatically. 

If it's connected to the tv via a cable of some sort (optical, hdmi) you can try disconnecting that when you're not using the tv to see if the problem goes away.  If the bar still does it when not connected to the tv at all, you can eliminate the tv as the source of the issue. 

If it's a smart soundbar, you can factory reset it and not connect it to wifi to see if that helps. (Some bars require a mandatory wifi connection to function, but many don't.)

Also, there is no such thing as "off" for many modern devices. The status lights may not be lit, but everything is running in the background awaiting a wake up signal from the (remote, cable connection, bluetooth, bulit in digital assistant with mic etc.) 

Good luck!

What flat4 said. Most modern electronics are never actually off they just put major systems to sleep while the cpu runs a signal monitoring loop so it can turn on once it gets a source. Unless you physically unplug it of course. Here's a Reddit post from a couple years ago about the same thing, involving a Vizio sound bar:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VIZIO_Official/comments/iulwnu/help_sound_bar_randomly_starts_playing_in_middle/

I suspect it's a neighbor accidentally connecting to your sound bar instead of theirs. They're probably wondering why their sound bar isn't working right. The choppiness is explained by the distance involved being at the edge of Bluetooth reception. 
 

If your sound bar has a way to turn off Bluetooth I bet that would fix it. If not you might be stuck switching it off at the power strip or something. What brand/model is it?

Maybe using your phone to scan for new bluetooth and wifi signals?  In the meantime I would pull the power cord on that soundbar.

The clock in my daughter's room is bluetooth enabled. My record player is bluetooth enabled. Sometimes when I play a record downstairs, her alarm clock upstairs plays the music with a ~1 second delay. Neither is, nor ever have been, synced to each other. 

Even if your neighbor isn't accidentally connecting, it still may just be capturing that signal somehow.

That's my totally uninformed guess.

Seconding Flat4. To check, either pull power from the soundbar or change it's password settings so potentially, nobody else can connect to it. Or really just do both, since most devices like this that can link to your home network are rarely protected properly and have been used in botnet attacks before.

In reply to AxeHealey :

I was quite surprised recently to have a rented RAV4 immediately connect CarPlay wirelessly to my iPhone - without pairing Bluetooth.

So I suspect this may be the scenario. 

Stampie said:

This is how it starts when Skynet first becomes self aware. 

We're way beyond that. 

I know that Driven5 has documented it wasn't a dream, but fwiw the last couple years there have been multiple nights per week where I was confident I'd been wide  awake for a period of time, only to roll over & see my wife had either come to bed/got out of bed, or that hours had past in what seemed like minutes. 

So yeah, that could definitely happen to someone. 

It's a Vizio (V51) sound bar, so apparently it is the most likely culprit. Currently connected via HDMI ARC. From everything I can find, it doesn't have wifi and the only way to wirelessly connect to it is via bluetooth. We do use bluetooth to play music from our phones occasionally. The 'virtual assistant' is either via a cable or bluetooth.

So one thing I've confirmed is that with the default VA setting, anything connected via bluetooth will still play even when the sound bar shows off. This was one of the most confusing and concerning aspects for me from last night. It looks like the most likely culprit, and turning the VA off does prevent it. So VA is now off, and I suspect should fix the problem.

However, this isn't a particularly 'smart' sound bar, so I've been having difficulty recreating any circumstances in which somebody other than us could connect to it (inadvertently or intentionally) without our knowing in the last couple of days. Most other descriptions I've found don't match up. Being in a better mental state this morning, after getting some sleep and reading your posts, it has taken me over an hour of working through the manual and various settings on both the sound bar and our devices to finally come up with just a single scenario that that would even allow this to happen. It's not a particularly likely one, where multiple unusual (for us) things would all have to line up in sequence, but I suppose not totally implausible either. Despite still having some unanswered questions, it's the best (and only) explanation I've got at this point. So it's the one I'm going with for now.

Thanks for your help clearing my head and leading me the right direction. 

Since so many of you refuse to acknowledge the obvious:

AxeHealey said:

The clock in my daughter's room is bluetooth enabled. My record player is bluetooth enabled. Sometimes when I play a record downstairs, her alarm clock upstairs plays the music with a ~1 second delay. Neither is, nor ever have been, synced to each other. 

Even if your neighbor isn't accidentally connecting, it still may just be capturing that signal somehow.

That's my totally uninformed guess.

Meanwhile, if I am in the Batcave listening to Bluetooth headphones and I duck under a car, the music cuts out.

Do you have braces?

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