Review and Measurements of Chord Mojo DAC and Amp

[pkane]

-200dB is not enough ! See:

Watts Up...?

I‘m glad I was able to introduce you to new music that you liked, Christer. I know you set high standards for what you listen to. The funny thing is I did not realise the first video I posted was mono. My music system at the time was disassembled into its component parts and my first listen...

www.head-fi.org

I see Rob’s hearing has improved over a few years from -200 to -301dB!

 

[Killingbeans]

Like hunting quail with a howitzer.

 

[BDWoody]

I see Rob’s hearing has improved over a few years from -200 to -301dB!

He's giving reports to NASA on how the mirror stepper motors on Webb are sounding.

 

[Music1969]

I see Rob’s hearing has improved over a few years from -200 to -301dB!

He goes into the -301dB with this recent interview with John Darko LOL

It's hilarious. Both Darko's comments/questions and Watts comments/answers

Podcast: Rob Watts on the Chord Mojo 2 | Darko.Audio

A conversation about the new mini marvel from Chord Electronics.

darko.audio

 

[Miska]

I see Rob’s hearing has improved over a few years from -200 to -301dB!

But still has fairly low stop-band attenuation on his filters, ranging from 100 to 120 dB. Thus giving about 17 - 20 bits reconstruction accuracy from digital filter point of view.

For Mojo2 I wonder if he has got around to fix the flaky USB interface implementation. With my first gen Mojo I get full volume white noise blasts after a while with any source device. Happens due to USB packet loss and that drives rest of the pipe nuts. Really nasty with headphones...

 

[Jimbob54]

He goes into the -301dB with this recent interview with John Darko LOL

It's hilarious. Both Darko's comments/questions and Watts comments/answers

Podcast: Rob Watts on the Chord Mojo 2 | Darko.Audio

A conversation about the new mini marvel from Chord Electronics.

darko.audio

Almost as hilarious as Darko forbidding links to his site from here....

 

[SRKRAM]

Almost as hilarious as Darko forbidding links to his site from here....

I wondered what was going on when, a few days before the mojo 2 launch, Darko announced that he wasn't going to cover DACs any more, at least for the rest of the year because they have less of an impact on the overall system sound. The article was accompanied by a picture of a mojo OG. I wondered if it was setting up for a review of the mojo 2 and then, sure enough, he comes out with a 'not a review' of the mojo 2 and an interview with Rob Watts.

 

[Veri]

But still has fairly low stop-band attenuation on his filters, ranging from 100 to 120 dB. Thus giving about 17 - 20 bits reconstruction accuracy from digital filter point of view.

For Mojo2 I wonder if he has got around to fix the flaky USB interface implementation. With my first gen Mojo I get full volume white noise blasts after a while with any source device. Happens due to USB packet loss and that drives rest of the pipe nuts. Really nasty with headphones...

So far in Mojo2 head-fi I saw multiple people having the white noise blasts. So I guess same sort of chance for it to happen..

 

[Jimbob54]

I wondered what was going on when, a few days before the mojo 2 launch, Darko announced that he wasn't going to cover DACs any more, at least for the rest of the year because they have less of an impact on the overall system sound. The article was accompanied by a picture of a mojo OG. I wondered if it was setting up for a review of the mojo 2 and then, sure enough, he comes out with a 'not a review' of the mojo 2 and an interview with Rob Watts.

I love that Mr Watts takes his m scaler on plane journeys. Essentials!

 

[seelphedvr]

Almost as hilarious as Darko forbidding links to his site from here....

On that particular point, it is just the way the link was added. The link works perfectly fine once you remove the final "/". I might also be wrong but doing that solved it.

 

[mudy]

On that particular point, it is just the way the link was added. The link works perfectly fine once you remove the final "/". I might also be wrong but doing that solved it.

I think he block on http referer. When you click on a link your browser will send current webpage location to the new site. But when you changed something on address bar then enter again browser won’t send previous webpage again.

HTTP referer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[mansr]

I think he block on http referer.

Yes, he does:

$ curl -I --referer https://audiosciencereview.com/ https://darko.audio/
HTTP/2 403 
date: Thu, 24 Feb 2022 10:09:35 GMT
x-turbo-charged-by: LiteSpeed
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
expect-ct: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct"
report-to: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https:\/\/a.nel.cloudflare.com\/report\/v3?s=gJ5C2pL5pA9WCbE8B269HX%2BaKxmOxdYTzcGpQ1X5TzCJ0IFMOGPQxHnRvljr05mRfCxGRP9xA4Br4ZYxKxrMzU5apWflhelXdFVucAnSdwWbP%2F03Dw5szi8UxwjOh2SugdLRYIlFfiqWBg%3D%3D"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
nel: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 6e27e63459ca892a-LHR

Very childish.

 

[Jimbob54]

Yes, he does:

$ curl -I --referer https://audiosciencereview.com/ https://darko.audio/
HTTP/2 403
date: Thu, 24 Feb 2022 10:09:35 GMT
x-turbo-charged-by: LiteSpeed
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
expect-ct: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct"
report-to: {"endpoints":[{"url":"https:\/\/a.nel.cloudflare.com\/report\/v3?s=gJ5C2pL5pA9WCbE8B269HX%2BaKxmOxdYTzcGpQ1X5TzCJ0IFMOGPQxHnRvljr05mRfCxGRP9xA4Br4ZYxKxrMzU5apWflhelXdFVucAnSdwWbP%2F03Dw5szi8UxwjOh2SugdLRYIlFfiqWBg%3D%3D"}],"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
nel: {"success_fraction":0,"report_to":"cf-nel","max_age":604800}
server: cloudflare
cf-ray: 6e27e63459ca892a-LHR

Very childish.

If they can't see me they can't hurt me!

 

[Veri]

Very childish.

How very petty, indeed.

 

[SRKRAM]

How very petty, indeed.

After Darko announced that he wouldn't review and more DACs for the rest of the year he's now released 2 videos about the mojo 2.

 

[Miska]

I think he block on http referer. When you click on a link your browser will send current webpage location to the new site. But when you changed something on address bar then enter again browser won’t send previous webpage again.

You can use privacy proxies to strip referers. I do that on a Squid proxy using regexp rules, so I can decide to selectively do it.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

But still has fairly low stop-band attenuation on his filters, ranging from 100 to 120 dB. Thus giving about 17 - 20 bits reconstruction accuracy from digital filter point of view.

For Mojo2 I wonder if he has got around to fix the flaky USB interface implementation. With my first gen Mojo I get full volume white noise blasts after a while with any source device. Happens due to USB packet loss and that drives rest of the pipe nuts. Really nasty with headphones...

On my Mojo Classic, the only times the white noise happened was due to crappy cable.
Once I fixed that, it never happened again.
BTW, I am pretty sure that the USB input and its firmware was not his (edit: Rob Watts) doing .
I believe he mentioned that at some stage.

 

[Bronco]

He's giving reports to NASA on how the mirror stepper motors on Webb are sounding.

I think you may have stumbled onto the next big thing here, Woody.

Please excuse me while I run out and grab a tank of liquid nitrogen. I’m going to cool my Mojo down to -270C and see if it improves my SINAD number.

 

[Bronco]

I love that Mr Watts takes his m scaler on plane journeys. Essentials!

Not just the m scaler, but the also the Hugo 2 and the battery bank required to run all of it.

Can you imagine how many hours of body cavity searches he’d be subjected to by the TSA if he tried to drag all that stuff onto a plane in the U.S.? LOL.

 

[Simon P]

I contributed to this thread before. I just bought a used original Mojo.

To me, the Mojo sounds different to a DACmagic 100. Using a separate amp in both cases.

My conclusion remains: Time domain reconstruction performance makes a difference subjectively. I'm sure both are excellent in the frequency/phase domain. Don't know which is more accurate and to what. Not sure which I prefer overall, probably the Mojo. The DACmagic has more sense of pace and slam. It draws more attention to the frequency extremes subjectively and to stage width. The Mojo sounds warmer, more organic, more 'rounded' and 'together'. Less suspicion of added 'hash' or 'grain'. It seems to give more expressive vocals. For me. How much difference it makes to an individual I'm not sure, but I'm pretty certain there's a difference. Are my impressions valid? I have failed in the past to consistently identify hires files compared to CD res, blind, in quick comparisons! So I could obviously be wrong. But I still don't think so.

The minus 301 dB stuff did seem a bit far out to me. Maybe I don't understand what Rob is trying to say. I think he's discussing the error level at each tap in a FIR, which could accumulate. I don't think Darko is an in depth a technical guy.