Chord Electronics has launched Mojo 2, the replacement for the genre-defining original portable DAC/headphone amplifier.
Time flies! It’s been almost seven years since Chord Electronics created the high-end portable DAC genre. Now the company’s long-standing digital design consultant, Rob Watts, has revisited, reimagined and reengineered the award-winning original with ground-breaking, world-first technology.
The new Mojo 2 benefits from several innovations, the star being a revolutionary lossless DSP – first of its kind worldwide. The ground-breaking ‘UHD DSP’ is fully transparent and enables comprehensive tone adjustments across the frequency range, without any sound degradation. The new technology gives Mojo 2 unrivalled compatibility with today’s wide-ranging choice of headphones, regardless of type and sonic signature. Additionally, it offers flexibility with different source components and digital file types.
A further key feature is the introduction of a menu system. Navigated via a new (fourth) control sphere, the menu brings a mute function, four-setting crossfeed adjustment, and button-lock for travelling. The fourth sphere also gives you access to the fully lossless tone controls.
Chord Mojo 2 features new USB-C data input
Digital inputs have increased to four, thanks to a new USB-C data input for greater flexibility. USB-C features alongside optical, coaxial (incl. dual-data for the M Scaler) and Micro USB. Two 3.5 mm mini-jack headphone outputs allow up to two people to listen simultaneously.
Better battery and charging
Mojo 2 benefits from greatly improved battery management, thanks to a new FPGA-based battery-charging system. The tech brings much faster charging rates, coupled with a huge 75 % reduction in power loss. It therefore allows for cooler, more efficient charging. Capacity is up by 9 %, resulting in better efficiency and improved battery life, which is now better than eight hours.
Chord electronics also improved Mojo 2’s established ‘Intelligent Desktop Mode’ technology, with an isolated battery and PSU redesign to support battery-free operation without any losses in sound quality, plus improved filtering and isolation.
Improved transparency
Mojo 2 is now DC-coupled with a digital DC servo. It benefits from an improved WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) filter, now offering 40,960 taps (the technical indicator of how complex the interpolation filter is), using 40 DSP cores.
Additionally, an improved noise-shaper offers greater depth and detail perception, plus improvements to the 4e Pulse Array DAC introduce lower distortion and out-of-band noise. Greater neutrality has also been achieved, thanks to the elimination of coupling capacitors.
New fully transparent UHD DSP
Mojo 2 benefits from the world’s first fully transparent ‘UHD DSP’. The proprietary technology uses a 104-bit custom DSP core running at 705/768 kHz: no other audio DSP offers the same accuracy. By using 104 bits plus extensive internal noise-shaping, Mojo 2 can deliver complete transparency by preserving the filtering of ultra-small signals.
UHD DSP features
The unique UHD DSP enables fine-tuning across the full frequency range with 18 steps of adjustment per frequency banding: lower bass, mid-bass, lower treble and high treble.
The volume control range has also been improved from +18 dB to -108 dB, and now benefits from two distinct operational ranges: low and high volume.
A new four-setting crossfeed function, also DSP-controlled, brings speaker-like spatial effects for flexible headphone listening.
Class-leading build quality
The Mojo 2 is designed, engineered and handmade in the UK. It benefits from high-grade, bead-blasted aluminium casework, finished with a high-quality black anodise. Control is via four polychromatic polycarbonate control spheres.
Go wireless with Poly
Mojo 2 is fully compatible with the Poly streamer/server, enabling high-resolution streaming and up to 2 TB of solid-state library storage and playback when using the microSD card slot.
Price and availability
The Chord Mojo 2 is available now in black only. The suggested retail price in the UK is £449.