User Manual

internal changes to battery management
make for faster and, importantly, cooler
charging, greater capacity and improved
battery life, now claimed to better eight hours
(on IEMs/headphones with USB). Chord
Electronics has also improved the battery
side of things for desktop users; the power
supply has been redesigned so that sound
quality isn’t compromised when the DAC is
permanently connected to a charger.
While Mojo 2 is predominantly designed
for use on the move with a smartphone source
it can be paired with the Poly streamer/server
that couples to the case and can provide up
to 2TB of music le storage via microSD card.
Switching on Mojo 2 prompts a merry
dancing of lights for maybe 20seconds before
a relay clicks and it’s ready to roll, thereafter
the colour of the power button indicates the
incoming sample rate all the way from CD’s
44.1kHz to 768kHz with a nal white button
for any DSD format. Remembering which is
which is not important but the order is similar
to that for volume albeit there is a lot more
range in the latter and only the upper end has
the same colouring. The volume is obviously
a lot more critical though, especially for
headphone users who want to retain their powers of hearing, Chord Electronics
make the point of advising users to take the level right down before rst use.
My initial attempts to use the Mojo 2 were thwarted to the extent that a
second sample was sent, when that one defeated me I sent a picture to Chord
Electronics’ MD and tech guru Matt Bartlett who spotted that the micro USB
cable I was using looked a bit skinny, and was possibly not a fully functioning
data cable. As it was something I’d found in the bag of random USB cables it
was probably a charging cable. Only when I went over to the very short cable
supplied in the box (designed for mobile users) was the source able to see the
DAC. This hurdle out of the way listening could progress.
I used the Mojo 2 with a Melco N10 digital library, plugged into its USB
streaming port, which is admittedly not a typical application but it allowed the
DAC to be assessed with a source that was not likely to hold it back or colour
the results. The resulting sound using an Audioquest minijack to RCA phono
lead into my system was thrilling, intense and very exciting but a little too
forward for my tastes. The sound produced being fast and clean but a little too
much so with less sophisticated music such as Slint’s fairly edgy Spiderland
[Touch and Go]. With smoother material such as Abdullah Ibrahim’s Africa,
Tears and Laughter [Enja] it delivered impressive dynamic range thanks to a
very low perceived noise oor which let plenty of the quieter details through.
A solo violin piece by Amandine Beyer [Outhere] was wonderfully open and
immediate, too, but it also showed it was time to try out the tone controls.
It took a while to get used to these, and the manual needed to be at hand
every time I did so, but the results were clear and I had plenty of fun trying
different combinations of EQ tweaks across the two shelf settings; 125Hz and
3kHz. Each change was clear so long as I jumped two or three dB at a time
and having discovered that increasing the 125Hz shelf had a thickening effect
“Chord Electronics has also improved the battery side of things for
desktop users; the power supply has been redesigned.”
EQUIPMENT REVIEW / CHORD MOJO 2
Reproduced from HI-FI+ Issue 205 www.hifiplus.com