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CHORD Mojo 2 Review (Portable DAC & HP Amp)

Rate this product:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 11 3.2%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 34 9.8%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 145 41.9%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 156 45.1%

  • Total voters
    346

kanefsky

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Since there exist since years excellent and pretty cheap dongles, I don't understood anymore neither the use case for DAPs nor bulky portable battery powered dacs/heaphone amps (what is the supposed source in this case?). Everybody has a smart phone, so get an almost SOTA dongle for $100 and you are done. Wht is the point?

I think of it more as a small desktop DAC or a travel DAC rather than a mobile DAC. Some of my use cases include using it with a small laptop (MacBook Air), on my exercise bike, with a digital piano, and next to the couch for late-night movie listening. The optical/coax inputs are important for three of those cases (something lacking from most mobile DACs). In fact, I'm avoiding the USB input because a lot of people have experienced an issue where there's a sudden burst of full-volume white noise when using the USB input, and there's no firmware upgrade capability so there's no chance of it ever being fixed that way. There are various theories about what triggers the issue, including bad or loose USB cables and sudden changes in sample rate.
 

Garrincha

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I think of it more as a small desktop DAC or a travel DAC rather than a mobile DAC. Some of my use cases include using it with a small laptop (MacBook Air), on my exercise bike, with a digital piano, and next to the couch for late-night movie listening. The optical/coax inputs are important for three of those cases (something lacking from most mobile DACs). In fact, I'm avoiding the USB input because a lot of people have experienced an issue where there's a sudden burst of full-volume white noise when using the USB input, and there's no firmware upgrade capability so there's no chance of it ever being fixed that way. There are various theories about what triggers the issue, including bad or loose USB cables and sudden changes in sample rate.
As far as I can see none of these use cases couldn't be performed with a dongle and a smartphone or laptop.
 

majingotan

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Serious question, what is the technical difficulty in building such a sharp reconstruction filter?

Nothing special with Chord's filters BTW

AFAIK, Chord Mojo (and Mojo 2) uses 16FS oversampling = 768KHz using a reconstruction filter similar to "Sinc M" that you can try on your DAC with HQPlayer.

As you can see, Sinc M with 4x oversampling is already very steep
HQPlayer Resampler DFCs.png
 

majingotan

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Ok, and would would be the cost in comparison to these incorrect slow filters?

Better objective performance. Theoretically, no aliasing issues above Nyquist frequency. Soundwise, inaudible unless you're a bat that can hear the grass ultrasonic spikes with a slow roll-off filter
 

Blumlein 88

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Better objective performance. Theoretically, no aliasing issues above Nyquist frequency. Soundwise, inaudible unless you're a bat that can hear the grass ultrasonic spikes with a slow roll-off filter
I don't mean to be too pedantic. But on the playback side on DACs you are looking at anti-imaging filters and imaging issues. If aliasing is in the recording you'll still get that.
 

Garrincha

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Better objective performance. Theoretically, no aliasing issues above Nyquist frequency. Soundwise, inaudible unless you're a bat that can hear the grass ultrasonic spikes with a slow roll-off filter
I understand that such a filter is more accurate, the question was what is roughly the additional cost?
 
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Billy Budapest

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The performance of this device looks great, but the industrial design is meh. It’s a shame Chord didn‘t update the design for this long overdue revision.
Chord did in fact change the design somewhat from the original Mojo—for example, they added an additional globe/orb button—but it actually looks worse.
 

kanefsky

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As far as I can see none of these use cases couldn't be performed with a dongle and a smartphone or laptop.

For my exercise bike, I'm listening to movies/tv/music via my home AV system halfway across the room. I need optical or coax input and a separate power input so I'm not sure how a dongle would work in this case.

Same as above for late night movie/tv watching on the couch.

My digital piano only outputs audio via analog or coax digital audio. The USB is just for MIDI so it wouldn't work with a dongle.

I could use a dongle with my laptop but for a laptop the size of the Mojo 2 actually becomes an advantage. It's got great build quality, nice volume buttons and status lights, and enough weight that it stays in one place but it still very easy to travel with. I used a Qudelix 5k for a while but it was kind of annoying the way it would flop around with the cable and never stay put. If you mean the true dongles that are barely larger than the USB connector itself and don't have battery power, they're not quite able to drive all of my headphones to acceptable levels.
 

solderdude

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@amirm could you do the different load impedance/distortion test ?

The only downside of the Mojo's (and is why I sold mine) is the battery crapping out after some time.
I hope Chord addressed that issue.
 

Music1969

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The only downside of the Mojo's (and is why I sold mine) is the battery crapping out after some time.
I hope Chord addressed that issue.

Once it goes into 'desktop mode' the battery is completely disconnected from the playback circuit. Power comes fully from the 5Vdc external power.

So should significantly save battery cycles.

This has changed from Mojo 1.
 

kanefsky

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Almost the same price as a used RME ADI-2 DAC FS.

I actually was using one of those in my exercise bike setup but it was just too big for the space I have available there and it requires its own separate power cable (the Mojo 2 sort of does too but it's just a standard micro USB power input and I already had a 4-port USB power supply within a foot).
 
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