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Chord Mojo 2 £395
Few real-world (read: not ludicrously expensive) products can be considered real game changers in hi-fi. But in 2015 the Chord Mojo burst onto the then-fledgling portable DAC/headphone amplifier scene as one of them, flag in hand and ready to claim territory.
The palm-sized device justified its elongated name (‘Mobile Joy’), pushing the parameters of what was possible for compact, on-the-go sound quality in the three-figure price domain.
The fittingly named Mojo 2 is the long-anticipated, re-engineered replacement. And while the aesthetic hasn’t exactly been overhauled for the sequel, significant progress has been made elsewhere to protect its position at the pinnacle of the portable DAC world.
The headline development lies inside the aluminium casework and is what Chord is calling the ‘UHD DSP’, supposedlydigital signal processor. We are seeing the word ‘lossless’ more than ever in today’s digital-savvy world, as more software and hardware companies strive towards bit-perfect reproduction of digital music. And here the sky-high promise is customisable digital-to-analogue conversion that doesn’t degrade sound quality along the way.
