CHORD ELECTRONICSMojo 2

After setting up a lossless streaming service on my high-end Samsung phone and tweaking sound quality settings, I've been surprised at the quality available in lossless formats. At first I was just using my Sony wireless WF1000XM4 buds and the sound was surprisingly good. Then I tried my Mojo (original) with Sennheiser HD800s phones and it gave me the best hifi headphones experience I'd ever heard!Then I noticed there was a Mojo2. I couldn't really believe there could be much improvement from the original version. So I tried a friend's. And I was wrong!So I've been using the Mojo2 for a week and have been thrilled by the improvements to the sound quality. At first I thought they were good but marginal until I started exploring the crossfeed settings. Which setting you choose depends on your ears and how the source material was mixed. It aims to give a more loudspeaker type soundstage by mixing and tweaking some of the stereo channels' sound to give some instruments and voices a much clearer presence in the space between the left and right. While nothing at all like sitting in a room with loudspeakers, it just gives a much more dimensional and involving soundspace.I haven't had the need to explore the new equaliser section but it might be useful to adapt the sound for less expensive headphones.The battery seems to last longer and the "intelligent desktop mode" means you can leave a charger plugged in without compromising the life of the battery. In extended use it still gets warm, but that's a feature of the design allowing the internal heat to be dissipated through the aluminum case.So is it worth an upgrade? Much as I was enjoying my original Mojo I have to say that for me the answer is yes. Going back to the original just makes it clear what improvements have been made. Even with the new crossfeed turned off, the Mojo2 has better sound quality and clarity, but it's a musical clarity with lots of depth and space. Add the 3 levels of crossfeed and you've got subtle but noticable improvements that make the musical experience much more satisfying. It's not cheap and there are cheaper mobile DACs that will improve the sound from a phone or other source. But if you can hear the difference in musical quality it's worth it.

Listening unit for a while I wasn't hesitant to write review, so long session listen test conducted with different Speakers & Headphones. I must say this thing doing state-of-the-art digital analog conversion. Had Before IFI NANO IDSD black edition. I'm only compared with DAC inside Entry Marantz Amp Akm 4490, IFI Nano IDSD black (Burr Brown 1490 DAC). MOJO 2 light years ahead in everything first it doesn't have pulse wave modulation or any white noise distortion (There is a record which recorded 1987 song starting with melancholic synth lines and short a cappella) recording mixing engineering of this record also bad not professionally made. I'm just amazed how Mojo 2 pull out so much information from this track, emotional distress of singer sadness realistic vocals & many more micro details separation feeling space around stage. All other DACS have shouty upper midrange or brighter sounding with some records, but not Mojo 2. Tested with Sennheiser HD 660 S headphones & Focal Stellia headphones, result astonishing. When you listen music with this thing, it immediately brings smile & enjoyment in your face. Many people say FOCAL & B&W Speakers bright. Focal speakers excellent revealing neutral great speakers with excellent tonality. Because I was using Nano IDSD bLack as DAC, saxophone trumpet some vocal artists like Kate Bush Phil Collins just sounded not good sometimes shouty. With Mojo 2 all these artifacts are gone now Focals Chora 806 sound amazing. This thing so good you can know how real Karen Carpenter sounded in 70's. Every instrument vocals sounds like in real life with artist on stage. This magic miracle. Headphones sounds amazing too, but I'm more speaker guy so using it as desktop DAC. New improved technology Chord implemented only in this unit is intelligent desktop mode, it means your battery will last longer when it is fully charged and plugged to power source menu button shows pink color FPGA disconnects battery. Couldn't discern difference with power cord or battery sounds good also from charge adapter. First Mojo was evolutionary DAC with more downsides. Technical accomplishments wasn't made. It was a raw product, more define elements implemented only in Mojo 2. This UHD DSP lossless DSP it is not alter worsen sound as another DSPs. This is true before used ROONS DSP with 64 bit float, absolutely changed sound everything sounded shouty sound stage non-existent, stopped using it. Mojo 2 doesn't offer so much option For DSP as ROON DSP does, but doing it without degrading sound Quality. Implementation 104 Bit DSP on Mojo 2 again revolutionary. This means you can adjust sound as your liking 100 % which suits your speakers or headphones without degrading sound adding another white noise from pulse modulation.Absolutely worth Product, John Franks with Rob Watts at Chord must be proud what they accomplished with second revision of Mojo.

Rob Watts has done an amazing job of putting so much tech into such a small case. It oozes quality and simplicity and most importantly the sound is amazing. Apart from the clarity, soundstage and usual descriptions it is purely and simply so musical. He conducted hundreds of listening tests before arriving in its current form. Whether used in a system as your main dac or headphone- you can’t go wrong. I leave it on its main setting and don’t bother to use the various filters but if you want to you can do some serious tweaking. Excellent dac, buy with confidence.

After fashioning a splint and clip system to make this impractical (ports sticking out everywhere) design work on the move I'm in audio walkies heaven. I won't go into praising it's audio merits as there's countless testiment to its skills. What I'd like to highlight is using onkyo player up sampling to DSD Dop 5.6MHz this dac can actually provide new found resolve and maintain depth of image. I've never before had a dac that can upsample without trading a seemingly flatter more two dimensional rendition. So we'll done chord for providing me a new reason to revisit my music collection. An excellent capable dac with a vast list of questionable design... Very audiophile traditional tradeoffs.