Testing, Testing, Chord Mojo 1, 2, 1, 2… Taking a look at the Mobile DAC/Headphone Amplifier.
/There are some things in life that are pretty certain to last just a matter of days – say a viral cold or flu, the milk in the Audio T Reading fridge (excluding the one that turned to cheese a while ago) or say the job of UK prime minister or chancellor. Then there are things that are proving, or have proven, to stand the test of time – the good ol’ turntable, incredibly the Millennium Bridge in Central London (despite it originally wobbling like jelly and swaying more than a drunk uncle at a wedding) and, of course, the virgin Chord Electronics Mojo.
The Chord Mojo 2 taking the baton from the Chord Mojo - Pictured With the Meze 99 Classics
Speaking of the Mojo; Back in 2015 it was thought impossible, even by the engineering gurus at Chord Electronics headquarters, to make a super high-quality combined DAC and headphone amplifier for portable use that at the same time occupied the same footprint as a flapjack, or a slab of chocolate brownie – please excuse the half-baked attempts at conveying dimensional wishes for the Mojo. However, in a eureka moment, when a new FPGA chip appeared on the market (for deployment in place of an off-the-shelf DAC chip), Rob Watts of Chord Electronics said ah, but indeed it now can be done – and so came the birth of the Chord Mojo … It went on to win countless awards and was considered among parts of the hi-fi community to be one of the products of the decade. Fast forward to 2022… and the Chord Mojo 2 had landed. Just imagine our unbridled excitement when it did! So, without further ado, let’s go on a deep-sea exploration with the Mojo 2 and see if Chord Electronics has managed to take one of the very best, and make it better…
Chord Mojo Meets Chord Mojo 2 - The End is Only The Beginning
Nearly Over To You, Chord ‘Mobile Joy’ 2
That’s right… the original ‘Mojo’ name was conceived by Chord as a device with aspirations to bring ‘Mobile Joy’ to its eventual owners. Chord has a great way of naming their products (yes even their bizarrely titled ‘Dave’ flagship DAC/Headphone Amp is ludicrously charming) and they know how not to fix something that isn’t broken. So, just as with the infamous original, ‘Mojo 2’ has a lovely ring to it… perhaps it’s now the “Mobile Joy Joy”? Sorry, that was terrible… Please do read on…
Before we get stuck into the Mojo 2, let’s recap what the superseded Mojo was designed to do. The main focus of Chord’s Mojo was to take digitally captured music files (e.g. MP3, FLAC, DSD etc.) from our digital music sources (such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, games consoles, etc.) and make it all sound gloriously higher-fi through your headphones. Sweet. And by making the Mojo so small and battery powered, it meant we could take our high-resolution sounds with us and enjoy them on-the-move. Also sweet. Further to this, Chord even threw in an extra headphone socket so that we could do all of this and share the listening experience with a friend. Sweetness overload!
It's clear that, with the Mojo, Chord Electronics totally excelled at nailing its brief and did so with ensuing, overwhelming success. The Mojo’s mix of high-quality, versatility and simplicity – enabling us to just plug in our digital sources (via USB, coaxial or optical) and simply adjust the volume to our preference – has been a truly unmatched offering of sheer enjoyment for almost a decade… and now it’s gone… Time for us to find the biggest pillow and group-cry into it…
Chord Mojo 2 - Oh The Pretty Lights
Refinding Our Mojo – Enter The Chord Mojo 2
Ah but wait… It’s our party and we don’t have to cry if we don’t want to… let us cheer… the Chord Mojo 2 is here! Just as with the original, it’s still about as small as a deck of cards, but this time it has some new tricks up its sleeves. Heaven knows how Chord Electronics has managed to squeeze it all in. Just a quick glance at the Mojo 2, and the only immediate difference from the first Mojo is an extra ball-shaped translucent button riding on the longer edge of the still premium feeling aluminium casework. Okay, yes, there’s the obvious number ‘2’ (no giggling now) etched into the new casework too. But upon further inspection, there is now an added USB-C port – along with the Micro-USB port that adorned the original – bringing good connectivity options with newer (as well as older) music source devices. Going back to those translucent ball buttons on the Mojo 2, they are now fixed in place (much like the Chord Qutest DAC) and no longer do they roll around in all directions to infinity as they did with the Mojo, which is perhaps a good thing for those of us with a nervous disposition and endlessly fidgety fingers.
So, what are those new tricks that are hidden inside the Mojo 2? Well, in no particular order, there is intelligent battery management, which means that you can leave the Mojo 2 tethered to a power source without it overcharging nor frying the in-built battery. Nice. Then, onto that extra spherical button… it’s part of a new control system which, in addition to the standard volume adjustment, now allows for simple functions such as locking the device from accidental button presses and for dimming those colourful disco-like Chord lights (a lighting hallmark found on other Chord Electronics products too, such as the Chord Huei MM/MC phono stage).
But the show-stopping features embedded into those new controls are firstly a crossfeed function – while it sounds like taking a bite from everyone’s delicious food in a restaurant (who would do such a thing?), it’s actually a clever way of blending a small proportion of the left-channel audio with the main right-channel, and vice versa; with the goal of enhancing stereo imaging and soundstage abilities when headphone listening, where the overall sound can sometimes have the effect of coming from very left and very right, with little in the way of nicely graduated imaging and staging in-between. The second killer embedded feature within the Mojo 2 (fans of ‘neutral’ should take a tea/coffee break now) is the option to adjust the bass, lower and upper midrange, and treble levels to either compensate for the stock frequency response of the chosen headphones (fans of ‘neutral’, welcome back) or to create a listening profile that accounts for personal taste (all fans, rejoice…).
The Chord Mojo 2’s Digital Inputs - Including USB-C (Slightly Hidden from View Here)
Neat Tricks, Mojo 2 – But How About The Sound?
Before we get to the business end of the all-important sound quality, it’s worth us touching briefly on Chord Electronics’ taps. The new Mojo 2 has an upgraded FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chip for performing digital-to-analogue conversion (DAC) duties, which now delivers 40,960 taps versus the 38,912 taps in the obsoleted Mojo. That’s 2048 more taps – more taps than a Bavarian beer festival – and what it all means, in a really rudimentary way, is that the Mojo 2 can reconstruct a waveform from the source file with more accuracy and with less noise than the Mojo. With that out in the open, let’s now wash our hands of these taps, and other nerdy jargon, and get to the fun part…
It was a pleasure to have both the Chord Mojo and Mojo 2 for audition and direct comparison. After a good number of evenings of listening to both, it has to be said that for most of those evenings all blogging duties had fallen by the wayside, because both of these devices made listening to music an absolute joy, or perhaps a mobile joy (definitely not a mobile joy joy), and the last thing anyone was in any danger of was getting a proper sleep. But one of these units eventually created more insomnia than the other… The original Mojo still sounded fantastic through a pair of Sennheiser HD 660S headphones, creating a wholly immersive experience with that signature Chord Electronics presentation. Everything in the musical mix had space to breathe, microfine details came through, and there was a massive sense of being in and amongst the performance as opposed to observing the action from a distance. Most of all, the Mojo showed that it has a fun-factor about it. It never forgot about the importance of letting its hair down, while still presenting the music with technical aplomb – what more could we ask for?
Well… we could certainly ask for the Mojo 2! Not at first though… because on initial listening through the Mojo 2, it sounded a bit too uptight. And like a stiff pair of new hard-wearing shoes, it just didn’t want to soften and break in (we’ve all had a pair of those stubborn clogs). This was noticeable on the first few evenings of auditioning, especially in direct comparison to the thoroughly worn in Mojo. Bewildered and on the verge of crowning the original Mojo the sonic champion, the Mojo 2 started to show glimmers of summoning its inner lifeforce. From this point on, hour-by-hour, album-after-album, it was gradually opening up and becoming more at one with The Matrix – eat your heart out, Keanu…
While streaming the DJ-Kicks: Kruder & Dorfmeister album from a Bluesound Node, via the Chord Mojo 2 and through the Sennheiser HD 660S (into a now very warm set of ears) it was noticeable how all of the original Mojo’s virtues were coming through, however now with improved dynamic range, more rhythmic snap, better tonal shading and generally more vigour. Moving to The Dining Rooms - Numero Deux what also kept coming through with the Mojo 2 was neutrality, to the point of sounding almost pancake-flat and not as pleasingly full as the original Mojo. Enter the frequency band adjustability within the Mojo 2. After just a few button presses, the bass and lower mid-range shelves were raised by just a notch. And in an instant, back came the fullness to the presentation, without affecting any of the other sonic goodness. While still feeling smug from the fulfilling fine tuning efforts, out came some more “tweakery” by engaging crossfeed at its lowest setting… This served to bring the stereo soundstage more out in front of the nose, whereas beforehand (with the crossfeed deactivated) the performance could be heard more inside the head. It’s a great option that could help to improve the performance of some headphones but might be best left disengaged for other cans and in-ear monitors.
Chord Mojo 2 - The Mighty Monarch Rules Supreme Over Its Headphone Kingdom
Concluding Impressions – King Chord Mojo 2
Without a shadow of a doubt, Chord Electronics have worked their magic yet again. They did it with the mighty Qutest, taking the DAC game forward from their honourable 2Qute. They did much the same in pushing the Hugo leaps and bounds ahead to deliver the stunning Hugo 2DAC and headphone amp. And now, in the feature-packed form of the UK made Mojo 2, Chord have raised the bar of the already best-in-class Mojo and taken their entry-level DAC-amp game into the stratosphere. At the current time of writing, there isn’t a product in and around the price point of the Mojo 2 that offers the same blend of versatility, superior sound and build quality, and outright desirability. It will even drive many of the higher-end headphones out there, such as the mesmerising Meze Elite, and we are happy to report that this combination works a treat. And let us not forget, the Chord Poly network streaming module, which thankfully remains compatible with the Mojo 2. When connected in unison, the Poly and the Mojo 2 create a powerful wireless, Roon Ready, streaming solution as well as a top-notch standalone digital music player by way of music stored on Micro SD. Yet more feathers in an already pristine looking cap. Chord Electronics’ Mojo 2 is well on its way to winning a whole host of awards and it does everything the Mojo did and a whole lot more. The King is dead… long live the King!
Thank you for reading.
Rishi, Gareth and Rob – Audio T Reading
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