Chord's Mojo 2 appeared in a teaser photo recently highlighting the new model's four polychromatic control spheres. The British hi-fi company boasts that Mojo 2 is "the world's first lossless DSP", adding that it will "set the benchmark for portable sound quality. Again".

Seven years. That's how long it has been since the original Mojo was released by Chord Electronics and, with it, arguably created the high-end portable DAC genre.

Read Our Mojo 2 Review!

Mojo 2 is the result of the company's long-standing digital design consultant, Rob Watts, revisiting, and reengineering the award-winning original with, what we're told is, ground-breaking, world-first technology. Thankfully, the unmistakable black anodised bead-blasted aluminium casework remains.

The headline refinement is its "revolutionary" lossless DSP, which is touted as the first of its kind in the world. According to Chord, the innovative new 'UHD DSP' is fully transparent, enabling comprehensive tone adjustments across the frequency range. More importantly, this is said to be achieved without any degradation in sound quality.

The result is that Mojo 2 has total compatibility with a wide-ranging choice of headphones, regardless of type and sonic signature, plus flexibility with different source components and digital file types.

The proprietary technology uses a 104-bit custom DSP core running at 705/768 kHz. By using 104 bits plus extensive internal noise-shaping, Mojo 2 promises complete transparency by preserving the filtering of ultra-small signals. Additionally, the UHD DSP enables fine-tuning across the entire frequency range with 18 steps of adjustment per frequency banding of lower bass, mid-bass, lower treble and high treble. Also, the volume control range has been improved from +18 dB to -108 dB and now benefits from two distinct operational ranges: low and high volume. Finally, A new four-setting crossfeed function, also DSP-controlled, brings "speaker-like spatial effects".

At long last, Chord's Mojo DAC gets a menu system, courtesy of that fourth control sphere. The new button brings with it a mute function, four-setting crossfeed adjustment, a button-lock feature, plus the fully lossless tone controls.

The power of four continues with the digital inputs and the addition of a new USB-C data input that sits alongside optical, coaxial and Micro USB. The handy pair of 3.5 mm mini-jack headphone outputs stay from the original, allowing two people to plug in and listen simultaneously.  

Thanks to a new FPGA-based battery-charging system, Mojo 2 has better battery management, translating to faster charging times while battery capacity is up by 9%, giving you more than 8 hours of play time, says Chord. Furthermore, while being used plugged in, Mojo 2's improved 'Intelligent Desktop Mode' technology features an isolated battery and PSU redesign that brings improved filtering and isolation with no loss in sound quality.

The improved WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) filter offers 40,960 taps (the technical indicator of how complex the interpolation filter is), using 40 DSP cores, which brings it close to Hugo 2 territory. Also, Mojo 2 is now DC-coupled with a digital DC servo.

Additionally, according to Chord, 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. Greater neutrality has also been achieved, thanks to the elimination of coupling capacitors.

Mojo 2 is fully compatible with Chord Electronics' Poly streamer/server, enabling high-resolution streaming and up to 2 TB of solid-state library storage and playback when using the microSD card slot and access to Roon.

The Chord Electronics Mojo 2 is available for US$725.

Visit Chord Electronics for more information