Digital-to-analogue converters are often overlooked, but the best ones can transform your system’s sound
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Chord Mojo 2 £495
Few real-world (read: not ludicrously expensive) products can be considered real game changers in hi-fi. But in 2015 the Chord Mojo burst onto the then-fledgling portable DAC/headphone amplifier scene as one of them, flag in hand and ready to claim territory.
The palm-sized device justified its elongated name (‘Mobile Joy’), pushing the parameters of what was possible for compact, on-the-go sound quality in the three-figure price domain.
The fittingly named Mojo 2 is the long-anticipated, re-engineered replacement. And while the aesthetic hasn’t exactly been overhauled for the sequel, significant progress has been made elsewhere to protect its position at the pinnacle of the portable DAC world.
The headline development lies inside the aluminium casework and is what Chord is calling the ‘UHD DSP’, supposedly the world’s first lossless digital signal processor. We are seeing the word ‘lossless’ more than ever in today’s digital-savvy world, as more software and hardware companies strive towards bit-perfect reproduction of digital music. And here the sky-high promise is customisable digital-to-analogue conversion that doesn’t degrade sound quality along the way.
Chord’s new proprietary 104-bit processor has opened the Mojo 2 up to a smattering of new features, most notably tonal adjustments across the frequency range. Elsewhere, a key element of the Mojo’s portability has been redesigned – the battery. The Mojo 2 still charges over Micro USB, but here a new FPGA-based charging system has been designed to deliver not only faster but also more efficient and cooler charging. To that end, Chord says battery life is now ‘better than eight hours’ (the claimed figure of the original Mojo).
Perhaps the most practical upgrade, however, is the addition of a USB-C input, which joins the existing optical, Micro USB, and 3.5mm coaxial inputs on one of the Mojo 2’s end panels.
We aren’t exaggerating when we say that Chord has advanced the Mojo in pretty much every sonic area. Its soundstage has been opened up for the sequel and that extra depth and dimension has been filled with greater resolution that is not only unmistakably present thanks to a big boost in clarity but also more precisely placed. A listen to Ludovico’s Rolling Like A Ball in hi-res is enough to tell us as much; the leading edges of piano notes are crisper without compromising the
