User Manual
I
n an alarming “where does the time go” moment Chord Electronics has
told us that it has been nearly seven years since they launched the Mojo
portable DAC/headphone amplier. I remember the launch at the Shard
high above London Bridge station well, and the views from the toilets
were spectacular! This time around there was no such ceremony; we
live in restricted times but that hasn’t stopped Chord Electronics from making
some pretty serious updates to its least expensive creation. That it has done so
without signicantly raising the price from the £399 it started out at is equally
impressive in a world of silicon chip shortages and rising ination.
Mojo 2 retails for £450 and remains a British made portable DAC and
headphone amplier that inhabits a solid aluminium case and is controlled by
translucent spheres that change colour according to function. The new Mojo
has a fourth button which is marked ‘M’ for menu and this provides an entry
point to this model’s biggest advance over its predecessor; tone controls via
DSP. This is a radical move to say the least, partly because tone controls are so
unfashionable within hi- circles and signicantly because no one else has done
this on a portable DAC before. In fact, it’s hard to think of any DACs that have
the sort of equalisation capabilities on offer in Mojo 2, Roon notwithstanding.
This EQ isn’t a mere treble or bass adjustment such as is found on some
ampliers, it’s more of a shelf type of control which allows increases and
decreases across frequency ranges, with bass adjustment at 20Hz, a 125Hz
shelf, and mid and treble above a 3kHz shelf and at 20kHz. Chord Electronics
has produced a video which better explains this but essentially it means
that the output can be tailored such that headphones will produce a tonal
balance that is either more neutral or more
appealing, take your pick. Given that a at
response does not necessarily sound better
end users are more likely to pick a response
that makes their music more enjoyable
through their headphones. It applies to the
two headphone outputs which can also be
connected to an amplier so could be used
to compensate for tonal variations in speaker
and room acoustics.
DSP has been used to provide
equalisation in a range of products for a
number of years but our experience of it has
rarely been positive, something is always lost
when DSP is used to provide a more even
frequency response. Chord Electronics’
digital design consultant Rob Watts points out
that DSP doesn’t sound transparent, makes
treble harder and loses detail resolution which
results in a atter sound. He explains that
“Problem is that small signals lose amplitude
accuracy, and the equalising DSP handles
small signals differently to large signals as the
signal fades into the resolution oor of the
Chord Mojo 2 portable
DAC/headphone amplifier
by Jason Kennedy
EQUIPMENT REVIEW
Reproduced from HI-FI+ Issue 205 www.hifiplus.com