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> Pingging to Dayglored. If anybody would have a good take on this it is Dayglored.

Thanks, I appreciate the compliment :-)

A number of things come to mind.

As Excellence and others stated, a computer is not off in "sleep" mode. It's very quiet, but it's awake, don't let anybody fool you. Otherwise you couldn't get its attention to "wake it up".
A computer isn't really off even if it's turned off. As long as its battery is there, and/or its AC charger/adapter is connected, it has power and it's capable of operation.
If you don't believe the above, search for Intel Management Engine security. That "management engine" can turn on your microphone, camera, wireless, and wired networking, among other things -- even when the computer is switched off, as long as there's a source of power.
Spyware rarely writes to the hard drive when the computer is powered off with only the battery (no AC), because running the hard drive chews up the battery charge and can alert the user that something is up. Instead, spyware tends to send the data directly out the network, over WiFi or Ethernet, if it can reach the internet.
I agree with FReeper Mr170IQ that the MP3 filenames you found are timestamps.
Given that these files were written to the hard drive, it's almost certain they were recorded while the computer was on or in sleep mode.
Look around on your computer for an application that records voice data -- memos or other "benign" uses -- and research the internet about whether that application is known to do unexpected or surreptitious recording.

That's about all I have on the top of my head. The other suggestions on this thread are worthwhile; don't take my comments above as anything like complete. :-)

I would think that IF computers were ‘secretly recording our conversations’ that some savvy techie somewhere would have discovered this by now, and it would have been confirmed by now by many others, and it would be all over the INTERNET and microsoft would be in court over this

Among other nifty safe and free apps, is autoruns (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns) which provides a very comprehensive list of programs that begin with Windows, and which you can choose to deselect. Usually.