Chord "Mojo"

The Chord Mojo definitely seems to have a specific sound signature. I happened to like it a lot while I had the loaner, but was not really using it as just a stand-alone DAC, but rather as a transportable DAC/amp for my cans. I am still on the fence over purchasing but given exchange rate, the Amazon.uk price is very tempting. I really don't want even a small Schiit stack on my nightstand so this would be a nice device to drive my HD 600 and other cans in the bedroom and will take up zero space as it will go into a drawer when not being used. Plus, it is transportable if not very useful as a true portable. I will leave the pure DAC evaluation to others who know more about DACs than I.

 

Yeah, i've been trying very hard to imagine that the Mojo is sprinkling magic fairy dust in my ears, but as soon as I plug into my studio interface I just realise I'm fooling myself.. but who doesn't like glowing balls? That's why I try to stick to pro studio equipment as the hifi world is full of unicorns with colourful balls, unfortunately not many studio portable DACs

 

Yarp.. I'd say it was a little bassy, and gently rolled-off up top (deliberate tuning, AIUI). It suffers a tiny bit of grain/glare on hot highs, too, but that's subtle and not audible all that often (at least in my IEMs). I do find it a very non-fatiguing and enjoyable sound for mobile use, though, where I am not being too analytical.

The amp-fu is distinctly mediocre, mind- though it's fine with most IEMs and other easy to drive headphones that I've tried.

Overall, I enjoy using it, despite the fanciful marketing, weird form factor and odd compromises that it necessitates. I don't regret buying it- though I did for a while.

 

Rob watts seems to forget there are more things to sound enjoyment than just timing, small signal resolution and noise floor modulation.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/766517/chord-electronics-dave/5145#post_12938860

What about:
Dynamics, Sound stage, Timbre, Tonality and Imaging.

 

Giant killer, no....massive ripoff, no.

My mojo has found a home in my speaker system. I like it here better than my X-Sabre, Havana, Musette, Modi 2 4490 and Bifrost Multibit. I will get some more time on the Gungnir Multibit this week but as memory serves, I am liking the Mojo in many ways as much as I liked the Gungnir Multibit for the short time I had it in my setup.

I do feel you have to take care to feed it good clean usb, like any dac and I also feel it is better as a dac feeding a separate headphone amp than by itself as an all in one.

As for mobile, I could never carry this around with a phone. Heck, I cannot even bring it down from the upstairs HP setup without it turning on in my poocket( on more than one occasion). And using a decent phone as a transport with Onkyo HF player and OTG cable it really is nothing to write home about. It is far from a big upgrade compared to the phone alone with mid-fi iems I have used. And even with Senn 650s and the phone I think the transport is very weak link.

Don't get me wrong it is certainly no where near perfection as a dac..... warmish bass, soft impact on the bottom and polite treble, yet transient response and tonality are very impressive. More time with Gungnir Multibit on my speaker setup should help me rank the two. I am feeling the Gungnir Multibit will come out on top based on my last audition and it should at double the price.

As for pro badged stuff sounding great, it is no different than audiophool stuff, some good... some poor. The TC Electronic dac I had was sterile and lifeless, but boy it measured great. The Benchmark was almost as poor. Then there are things like the Lynx HiLo? that sounded very good in a system at RMAF

 

I wonder if the Dragonfly Red comes close to Mojo when used purely as portable with phone, has anyone had a chance to compare? If it's a close call I might get the Red as it's much more portable..
Also Mojo + jitterbug from Mac, any improvement over stock?

 

mac + Jitterbug into 2-3 other dacs, not mojo = poop.........ymmv

 

The Jitterbug is an excellent way to spend another $50 and have more shite hanging off the side of your Mac than you otherwise need, especially feeding a Mojo*. Unless you're using a low-end Mac, use the optical output and bypass USB entirely for Mojo

But back to Jitterbug ... I found it made precisely no discernible difference driving USB DACs off my current-gen 15" Mac Book Pro than just connecting them directly. I built a cable that made more difference (measurable too). And while I've had no issues with the quality of my Mac Book Pro's USB ports (vs. other USB sources ... it's miles behind compared to TOSLINK or AES), I believe I am in the minority there (and, going further, am someone that generally uses anything BUT USB whenever I have the chance).

I say this based on having both Mojo and Dragonfly Red:



If you're using a phone as your source, just buy the Dragonfly. Mojo, while somewhat better (my opinions on Mojo are shifting, slowly, over time, and not in an entirely positive direction), is more of a pain in the arse. It doesn't get it's claimed battery life, is fussy about charging, heavy and yet way more prone to EMI than the Dragonfly.

That's not to say the Dragonfly is without its issues ... but at 1/3rd the cost, and not needing to be pandered to, it's a much more practical solution for travel use, at least, especially driving IEMs than Mojo.

(*Now, oddly, using the Jitterbug I bought with the near-$10K Dell 76XX workstation I have at one of my "day jobs" does make a difference. I attribute this more to the absolute pile of overpriced, under-engineered, "qualified", manure that is said Dell "workstation" than to any actual benefit to the Jitterbug. I'm of the opinion that insulating the DAC from the Dell with wet-string would likely yield similar sonic improvements).

 

@Torq

Don't forget about the Meridian Explorer 2 either, that's my pick of the bunch when it comes to these small portable DAC's. I'll be doing a little DAC review shortly where the Mojo is included, maybe Friday or so.

 

I shall look forward to your review!

I was never able to get the Explorer 2 to work with my iPhone without resorting to either a powered hub, or an unnecessarily blocky 2-port hub that lied about it's powered status. When I travel I'm either in pursuit of the smallest rig I can reasonably get away with, or have a bit more leeway and bring the Mojo. If you have a better solution there, I'm certainly interested!

Beyond that ...

Given a reasonable DAP option, I'd just take that, and IEMs (SE846/ER4-S right now, but about to make a move to customs, just not sure which). But I can't find a DAP that isn't terminally compromised for my purposes.

 

The thing is most portable stuff sounds either terrible or has one or more glaring issues. Mojo doesn't do anything particularly bad. Yes its limited technically, but not bad (although if used as a DAC alone the limits are even more evident ). I happened to like it much more than A&K 70, 300, jr, entire Fiio line.
On the other hand magni2/modi 2 stack sounds more convincing at a lower price.

 

No argument that Mojo beats the A&K line or FiiOs gear, especially with my SE846.

So does sticking a duck into my ear and blowing into the "wrong" end (I've been here before ...) ...

Sadly Magni/Modi are about as much use as a chocolate fire-guard when it comes to mobile use.

I can see that I'm going to have to make good on my threat to enter the audio space commercially ...

 

Good to read your experience with the Mojo @Torq
I'm struggling with USB > Mojo from my Macbook Pro (2013 model), it stinks.. optical out from Macbook > Mojo stinks even worse, I am using a cheap optical cable so maybe that's the prob.. moving to Android phone USB > Mojo it's actually listenable. Hiface 2 spdif battery powered > Mojo, and now it's where I can enjoy it properly.. but it's not exactly portable, so in my desperation I'm hoping that jitterbug will help as my main usage is from my macbook pro at work, it's no big loss if it doesn't work as jbug is cheap. Otherwise, I will try a better optical cable, and if that doesn't work maybe wyred 4 sound regen (but again this is not a "portable" solution)

 

Macbook USB does seem pretty messy. I found there was a ton of interference down the VBUS from a fairly recent one at work.. maybe a Wyrd (which supplies its own clean VBUS) would help?

(I should try my old MBP at home with it, see if it's any cleaner..)

 

Why not use the optical?

 

Optical from my Macbook pro sounds even worse than USB. It's got rougher treble, soundstage and instrument separation is buggered, sounds more shouty and tiring

 

I use the Mojo as my main portable device and it seems like it is indeed quite sensitive to jitter/noise on the inputs.

USB input sounds pretty uniformly bad to me across a range of sources. For ages I had been using SPDIF from iBasso DX90 w/ Rockbox and that was pretty bad too, missing bottom end, unrealistic timbre, collapsed soundstage and scritchy scratchy top end. Recently I discovered that the same DX90 running stock firmware is a MUCH MUCH better SPDIF source, to the point where my view of the Mojo has been completely turned around. The tonality is actually really nice, a bit warm and slightly polite in the top end, with good timbre and great transient response. It's not mind-blowing but it does most things pretty well. My latest wheeze is SPDIF from DX50 with stock firmware, which sounds slightly better still than DX90 stock, I guess because the analogue stage in the DX50 is less demanding and so is fighting less with the digital stage for control of the power supply.

Oh and yes, it does look kind of stupid and clunky the DX50 and the Mojo banded together but it fits nicely in my satchel so I don't really mind.

 

This is exactly my experience, with the Mojo banded to an old Galaxy S3 in flight mode. Because it's doing nothing major other than playing music, and all the radios are disabled, it behaves very well, and I get decent sound out of the Mojo.

It is clunky, which is awkward in the summer (when we're all wearing skimpy crop tops and bikini bottoms, right?), but now the weather is cooling down a bit, it goes in a coat pocket nice and easily, banded together and dropped in a small Alpkit cordura bag so it doesn't catch on anything.

Edit:

Shonky picture taken with my normal phone, of how clunky it is:

 

I wonder if one of those tiny 2.4" Android phones would cut it as a source (that doesn't sound crap)...

 

Maybe- if you made sure it wasn't running a ton of background stuff, and disabled cellular and wifi... I suppose it's a bit of a crapshoot, depending on how well-implemented a device it was, chipsets chosen etc..

I was just lucky- I had my old S3 sitting about, and it seems to work. I'd love to claim that it was the product of deliberate insight