DJM ACTIV Audio Ethernet EMI Filter Review (Bonus!)

[Beershaun]

I voted it poor because it's marketed as an audio device and there is no use case for this in a home audio environment.

 

[voodooless]

Well, at least this thing does 10G.. many of these audiophiles thingamabobs only do 100M

I think it’s just a 2 port 10G switch inside with a bit of extra filtering. Obviously pointless..

 

[Sokel]

I voted it poor because it's marketed as an audio device and there is no use case for this in a home audio environment.

No,not a word about audio:

(from company's description)

The DJM Electronics ACTIV™ brand EMI Filters are the most advanced and effective EMI filter design available on the market. Utilizing proprietary Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques, ACTIV EMI Filters faithfully reproduce digital signals without unwanted or extraneous interference. Military grade passive filtering technology ensures that digital input and output signals traverse the filter in complete and absolute isolation from each other and the outside world. Signal lines are balanced perfectly throughout the multilayered cards to avoid tainting the fast rise times required by digital square wave signals. The result is a pristine digital output far surpassing the filtering capabilities of any other EMI filters.

Every ACTIV™ EMI Filter is constructed with the highest grade electrical components, starting with a super accurate, ultra stable high speed crystal clock which drives the specially developed DSP circuitry and communication chipset. To protect against unanticipated voltage and/or current surges, ACTIV™ Filters incorporate ESD and transient voltage suppressors, inrush current limiters, and gas discharge tubes. ACTIV™ EMI Filters are mounted in a rugged protective housing machined from solid aluminum stock. The housing not only provides physical protection to the filter components, but is also an integral contributor to the filter's effectiveness. The unique structure of the housing effectively disrupts undesirable emissions from propagating through the filter while simultaneously providing low impedance pathways for interference to be directed out of the filter. Between the housing and protection circuitry, ACTIV™ EMI Filters are suitable for nearly any environment ranging from climate-controlled residential use to harsh and unforgiving military applications

Features:

• Proprietary DSP technology provides unmatched EMI filtering
• Military grade passive filtering techniques maintain clean and sharp signals
• Highest grade electrical components deliver long service life
• Rugged protective housing offers reliability in any environment

 

[Grotti]

I really don't know how to rate this device. It's obviously working as promised and probably up to it's specs, but the signal quality seems to be not affected. If it was rated poor on ASR, a perfectly working device from a manufacturer offering solutions which may be helpful outside the audio world would be rated not for its objective performance but for being a solution for a non existent problem. Well, at least they offer it for audio purposes obviously and for a steep price, so a poor rating may be deserved.....

 

[Grotti]

No,not a word about audio:

(from company's description)

The word "Audio" on it is at least one word about audio

 

[Sokel]

The word "Audio" on it is at least one word about audio

Yep,I stand corrected as this one looks specialized about it

The ACTIV AUDIO™ electromagnetic interference (EMI) Filter is the most advanced and effective EMI filter for streaming audio available on the market. Utilizing proprietary Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques, the ACTIV AUDIO™ filter faithfully reproduces streaming audio packets without unwanted or extraneous interference. The filter rejects unwanted signals from 50Hz and below all the way up to 40GHz at better than 100dB -- that's a noise reduction of 99.99999999%! Military grade passive filtering technology further ensures that digital music packets traverse the filter in complete and absolute isolation from each other and the outside world. Signal lines are balanced perfectly throughout the multilayered cards to avoid disturbing the fast rise times required by digital square wave signals. The result is a pristine digital output far surpassing the filtering capabilities of any other EMI filters.

Each ACTIV AUDIO™ Filter is constructed with the highest grade electrical components, starting with a super accurate, ultra stable high speed crystal clock which drives the specially developed DSP circuitry and Ethernet chipset. To protect the sensitive circuitry of the filter, incoming power is also filtered, conditioned and protected against deviations from specified voltage and current levels. The circuit cards are then mounted in a sleek, protective housing machined from solid aluminum stock. The housing not only provides physical protection to the filter components, but is also an integral contributor to the filter?s effectiveness. The unique structure of the housing effectively disrupts undesirable emissions from propagating through the filter while simultaneously providing low impedance pathways for interference to be directed out of the filter.

It says something starting from 50Hz though,we didn't see that in measurements,we rather see it working from 200Hz and up.
Maybe a "dirty" source would be more suitable to see?

 

[tw99]

I think Amir is giving way too much credit to the company.

There's no way such a device, even if needed, should cost what it does. And it isn't needed in any situation you'd have an audio system.

There's no point in bringing in how TCP, UDP or any streaming protocols cope with bit errors etc, because this device is going to have no impact on that in a domestic environment, or probably any other environment either.

 

[Rja4000]

Interesting.

We're managing industrial ethernet in factories and, sometimes, interferences are a fact.

Industrial field buses using ethernet are usually low bandwidth and using S/FTP cabling or FO to minimize interference impact.
They are using protocols that may be
compared to Dante, AVB or other live audio streaming data protocols :
They are similar to audio streaming, in a sense, since data quickly becomes obsolete.
They therefore also use UDP or direct layer 2 communication, since low latency requirement is incompatible with a lot of retries and buffering.

So for that use, this could maybe be useful.

I'd be curious to test this with a Dante flow in a very hostile environment.

 

[buz]

App level? I don't know of any app level error checking that operates over TCP/HTTP in a LAN. They rely on TCP for that.

There are UDP level applications that perform their own checking (e.g. NFS) but that is not what is used in home audio streaming.

FWIW, HTTP/3 has switched to UDP (probably too early for wide use, though) and TLS further complicates the picture...

 

[daniboun]

For audio, my tests on high performance streamers shows that the product is not needed. However if you are experience data errors on Ethernet due to special situation you might have, the DJM Electronic's ACTIV Audio Ethernet EMI filter may help deal with that.

Everything has been said here. Why spend $1950 on a gadget filter? At this price I prefer to pay for a round trip to the Bahamas)

 

[Yasuo]

I voted as soon as I saw the price! Thanks for the time spending for testing it.

 

[Berwhale]

Voted poor because this is sold as an audio device. The company seems legit and i'm sure it does something, but it's highly unlikely to be useful in a domestic environment.

I used to work in Merrill Lynch's Equity trading building next to a Farringdon Station in London. The Thameslink trains that used the station ran on electric power. This was provided by a third rail South of the station and by overhead lines North of the station. This meant that trains running North had to raise their pantograph whilst stationary at the platform. If it was raining, you would see massive sparks fly as the pantograph made contact with the overhead lines. I was told the resulting EM pulse had been sufficient to reboot servers and sometimes the lifts in the building (causing them to emergency drop to the ground floor). As a result, the whole side of the building was EM shielded to solve the problem (although it did make mobile/cell phone communication rather difficult!).

 

[DSJR]

I think Amir is giving way too much credit to the company.

There's no way such a device, even if needed, should cost what it does. And it isn't needed in any situation you'd have an audio system.

There's no point in bringing in how TCP, UDP or any streaming protocols cope with bit errors etc, because this device is going to have no impact on that in a domestic environment, or probably any other environment either.

But high-end domestic digital is full of this kind of expensive stuff, answering so-called issues that either don't exist these days, or are so insignificant they're way below any remote chance of audibility. I'm thinking of DCS and Chord here as two UK examples. My beef is the silly-high selling price, which may be so to add cachet to it in a largely tech-ignorant market (I'm a suspicious old sod I admit)

 

[milosz]

It's from a company named ACTIV Audio, but does any literature or company info say that the thing is intended as an audio accessory?

I can picture this thing being used at a high power FM or TV transmitter site, where audio and video content is delivered via IP and I've seen circumstances in such environments where ethernet connections get "iffy" due to high BER caused by all the RF. You don't want the video of the Superbowl macroblocking and glitching occasionally during a broadcast due to IP content delivery issues. It's not relevant to home hifi, but when $millions of advertising depends on absolute perfect performance of a broadcast, I can see some broadcast engineers being interested in a thing like this.

It's sold by dealers that specialize in RF shielding and filtering for the broadcast industry- https://www.djmelectronics.com/streaming-audio-ethernet-emi-filter.html is not a hifi retailer. Though I suppose that the manufacturer would be happy if some cloth-headed audiophiles wasted their money on the thing.

 

[Gio]

1.950$ …..……so cheap ! !

 

[JeremyFife]

Slight difficulty in voting... well made, does what it says.

Ultimately useless for audio and probably most other uses. Poor.

My concern is that devices like this add some legitimacy to the more overt snake oil claims that audio needs these things.

 

[PlasticDoc]

I am sure that the inside of the Ethernet EMI Filter will reveal really expensive and useful components, just as any bottle of snake oil will reveal really expensive and useful ingredients.

This one is also quite inexpensive at $1950, making it an affordable piece of equipment to have in every home, to keep those little foes that move inside Ethernet cables at bay.

 

[voodooless]

It's from a company named ACTIV Audio, but does any literature or company info say that the thing is intended as an audio accessory?

The word “audio” in the product name should give you a clue

 

[peniku8]

I have for example heard of CNC machines causing interference over Ethernet.

I don't know what's funnier, the idea of a critical listen room being next to/on the same network as a CNC machine or the fact that this is actually the case for our studio (right next to my CNC shop/in the same building).

 

[peniku8]

The word “audio” in the product name should give you a clue

The price tag being 100x the expected price of the product is yet another clue..!