Chord Mojo 2

[What Hi-Fi?]

Seven years later and Chord’s outstanding portable DAC finally has a sequel in the Mojo 2. So has it been worth the wait?

Chord Mojo 2 : Read more

 

[Johan Bottema]

At the current standard of DAC from chinese manufacturing I believe that it is not justified to pay more than £300 for a DAC. A DAC of £500 should be at least 32bit 384Khz, 256DSD and should have USB-C, Optical, SPDIF, XLR balance out, High current headphone output, volume knob and a remote control ... and it should have 20-21bit linearity, proper filtering, S/N >125dB ... And I am not falling for the whole brand name thingie considering all these DAC's use the same chipsets; and for that matter some of them fail on the filtering part. I don't think I will be buying this Chord DAC unless it drops well below £200 and then only because it looks funny with the colored LEDs.

 

[ALW]

At the current standard of DAC from chinese manufacturing I believe that it is not justified to pay more than £300 for a DAC. A DAC of £500 should be at least 32bit 384Khz, 256DSD and should have USB-C, Optical, SPDIF, XLR balance out, High current headphone output, volume knob and a remote control ... and it should have 20-21bit linearity, proper filtering, S/N >125dB ... And I am not falling for the whole brand name thingie considering all these DAC's use the same chipsets; and for that matter some of them fail on the filtering part. I don't think I will be buying this Chord DAC unless it drops well below £200 and then only because it looks funny with the colored LEDs.

Of course the Chord doesn't use the same chipsets as any other non Chord DAC and that is where the potential value comes.
I have a Mojo and a Topping DX3 Pro+. On paper the latter is better, based on standard measures, but in terms of sound the Mojo is far ahead in my experience.
The Topping is great for the money and I bought it for it's flexibility, primarily, but the Chord just presents music more cohesively, while the Topping dissects it.
I buy kit like this to listen to and enjoy music and I rate the Mojo as the best piece of HiFi I've bought in decades, in both sound and value for money.

 

[Radaos]

The Mojo 2 lacks the line level output option which was present on the original Mojo.
Beware if expecting to drive an amp.

 

[doifeellucky]

The Mojo 2 lacks the line level output option which was present on the original Mojo.
Beware if expecting to drive an amp.

Not an issue based on the reviews I’ve seen. One specifically connected it into a Hegel 390 with 3.5mm to RCA and said it worked well.

 

[sstoyanov]

Hi,
Does anyone know if you can control the volume of mojo 2 from computer when on usb? Previous mojo had volume control only from the buttons.

 

[doifeellucky]

This is some subjective feedback based on actual use. I bought one and I’ve been testing it for over a week. For me, in terms of absolute sound quality, it is arguably no better than a cheap dongle and I’ll be returning it due to a specific issue which I’ll come to.

I tested with hi res and tidal hifi on Mac, PC, iPhone and Pixel. I’m only using Grado 325x, which I’m sure some will say are not good enough for this level of product, but regardless of that there should at least be some improvement over something costing less than £10. For me there isn’t. I’ve repeatedly listened to high res live classical performances, and all the fine detail can be heard without the Mojo 2. Every genre I’ve tested sounds the same to me. I’d be disappointed if I’d spent £100 and got no benefit, let alone £450. The lowest DSP setting isn’t audible to me, which another reviewer with Arya Stealth also noted, and crossfeed does nothing worth commenting on.

To make matters worse when connected to my phone via usb c it even makes an audible click every 5 or so seconds. I checked on a forum and for the original Mojo the fix for ‘interference’ is to put your phone in airplane mode, making it utterly useless as a streaming playback device. I’m returning it on that basis.

I’ve seen other comments from owners, or those who have demoed it, saying this sounds no better than a Zen DAC V2 or something price equivalent, which I completely agree with.

Part of the reason I spent this amount was to also use it in my system to replace the inbuilt DAC in my Cambridge amp. I bought the suggested 3.5mm to RCA cable and again no noticeable difference.

The mojo 2 is an over hyped product, in my opinion of course. This is just a warning to those expecting some sort of ethereal experience with this product. Perhaps if you spend £1500 on some headphones you might get it, but I’d imagine a fairly high proportion probably won’t.

On a side note The cheapaudioman once said he typically only ever uses an Apple dongle when out of the house because it’s more than good enough. I’d tend to agree.