The new Mojo 2 from Chord Electronics has been a long time coming but features improvements over the … [+]
Chord Electronics has announced that it is launching Mojo 2, the long-awaited replacement of the original Mojo, the genre-defining original portable DAC/headphone amplifier.
Almost seven years after Chord Electronics created the high-end portable DAC genre with the Mojo, the company’s digital design consultant, Rob Watts, has revisited, reimagined and reengineered the award-winning original Mojo with some ground-breaking technology.
The new Mojo 2 features a revolutionary lossless DSP and is the first of its kind in the world. The innovative new ‘UHD DSP’ is fully transparent, enabling a comprehensive range of tone adjustments to be applied across the frequency range. Chord Electronics says it does this without any degradation in sound quality whatsoever. The new technology gives Mojo 2 compatibility with the latest headphones, regardless of how hard they are to drive and their sonic signature. The new design offers flexibility with different source components and digital file types.
The Mojo 2 now features a fourth button and a menu.
Another new feature is the introduction of a menu system that is navigated with the fourth control sphere. These frosted spheres are buttons but they also glow to show the type of file being decoded. The menu brings a mute function to the new Mojo, four crossfeed settings, a button-lock feature for traveling, plus those fully lossless tone controls.
The choice of digital inputs has increased to four with the addition of a new USB-C data input. Alongside the USB-C port, there are optical, coaxial and Micro USB inputs. Two 3.5mm mini-jack headphones outputs enable up to two people to listen at the same time.
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The Mojo 2 Mojo 2 has greatly improved battery management thanks to a new FPGA-based battery-charging system. The new design means the battery charges faster and has a 75 % reduction in power loss for cooler and more efficient charging. Battery capacity is up by 9 %, with around eight hours of playing time in real-world use.
There are now four digital inputs on the new Chord Electronics Mojo 2.
The Mojo 2 uses proprietary technology with a 104-bit custom DSP core running at 705/768 kHz. Chord claims that no other audio DSP offers the same level of accuracy. By using 104 bits, plus extensive internal noise-shaping, Mojo 2 can deliver complete transparency by preserving the filtering of ultra-small signals.
The UHD DSP enables fine-tuning over the full frequency range with 18 steps of adjustment for lower bass, mid-bass, lower treble and high treble. The volume control range has also been improved from +18 dB to -108 dB but now benefits from two distinct operational ranges: low and high volume. Additionally, a new four-setting crossfeed function produces an effect as if the listener is hearing the music through loudspeakers instead of headphones.
The new cutting-edge Mojo 2 is designed, engineered and handmade in the UK. It has a bead-blasted aluminum case with a high-quality black anodized finish. Control is via four frosted control spheres that change color.
I’ll be publishing my first impressions of the Chord Electronics Mojo 2 tomorrow so come back in 24 hours and see what I thought.
Pricing & Availability: The Chord Electronics Mojo 2 is available now and costs £449 / $725 / €599 / AUS $899.
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