Almost seven years after Chord Electronics redefined the high-end portable DAC genre, the company’s long-standing digital design consultant, Rob Watts, has revisited, reimagined and reengineered the original Mojo with new technology.
The new Mojo 2 benefits from several new features, chief of which is a new lossless DSP, which Chord calls "revolutionary" and "the first of its kind in the world." Detailing the benefits, the British company says that this innovative new ‘UHD DSP’ is fully transparent, enabling comprehensive tone adjustments across the frequency range, without any degradation in sound quality. "The new technology gives Mojo 2 unrivalled compatibility with today’s wide-ranging choice of headphones, regardless of type and sonic signature, plus flexibility with different source components and digital file types."
Another key feature is the introduction of a menu system allowing access to the new Mojo features. Navigated via a new (fourth) control sphere, the menu brings a mute function, four-setting crossfeed adjustment, a button-lock feature for travelling, plus the fully lossless tone controls.
The improved Mojo 2 also 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 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. Misteriously though - and ignoring all sustainability recomendations to the effect, Chord maintained a Micro USB connector for charging.
Mojo 2’s established ‘Intelligent Desktop Mode’ technology has also been improved, with an isolated battery and PSU redesign to support battery-free operation without any losses in sound quality, plus improved filtering and isolation. The Mojo 2 is now DC-coupled with a digital DC servo and 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. Chord also says that greater neutrality has been achieved, thanks to the elimination of coupling capacitors.
New fully transparent DSP
Essentially, the largest improvements in the new Mojo 2, are the result of the this fully transparent ‘UHD DSP’. The proprietary technology uses a 104-bit custom DSP core running at 705/768kHz. "By using 104 bits plus extensive internal noise-shaping, Mojo 2 can deliver complete transparency by preserving the filtering of ultra-small signals," says the announcement.
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 +18dB to -108dB, and now benefits from two distinct operational ranges: low and high volume. And a new four-setting crossfeed function, also DSP-controlled, brings speaker-like spatial effects for flexible headphone listening.
The Chord Mojo 2 is designed, engineered and "handmade" in the UK, benefiting from a high-grade, bead-blasted aluminum casework, finished with a high-quality black anodized layer. Control is via the emblematic four polychromatic polycarbonate control spheres.
The new Mojo 2 is also fully compatible with the Poly streamer/server, enabling high-resolution streaming and up to 2TB of solid-state library storage and playback when using the microSD card slot.
For now, the Mojo 2 is available in black (only) with a retail price of approx. $600 USD
www.chordelectronics.co.uk
