Chord Electronics has pulled out all the stops to create its smallest and least expensive DAC/headphone amplifier. Mojo brings Hugo levels of build and sound to a truly portable design with a £399 retail price. MD John Franks said that Hugo, which was originally built as a DAC for mobile audio enthusiasts, has instead succeeded in the listening room despite its compact size. Mojo is 2.2cm thick and 8.2cm long so literally no bigger than a cigarette packet yet it contains a more advanced processor than most high end DACs thanks to Rob Watts’ use of the latest FPGA chipset that allows it to process DSD all the way up to DSD256 and PCM with sample rates up to a mind boggling 768kHz.
Alan Sircom (left) and Chord MD John Franks (right) fondle the goods at the Mojo launch.
Mojo was designed to drive almost any headphone or IEM and can cope with impedances from eight to 800 Ohms via its two 3.5mm headphone jacks. Its lithium battery is claimed to provide between eight and ten hours of playback on a four hour charge and the casework is machined aircraft grade aluminium with a matt black finish. Unlike Hugo with its plethora of tiny buttons Mojo only has on/off and volume controls beneath its illuminated buttons, all other functions are automatic. Connections extend to USB, coaxial and optical for hook up to mobile phones, PCs and even CD players with the right adaptors – the sockets on Mojo are inevitably of the micro variety.
For a small (in the general scheme of things) company like Chord Electronics to produce anything at this price is astonishing, but to offer something very close to the quality of its £1,400 Hugo DAC/headphone amp for less than a third of the price is incredible. Designer Rob Watts said he was given the brief three years ago but it was only with the release of a very low power Xylinx FPGA chip in August that the concept started to take shape. Watts says he has voiced Mojo in a slightly more warm and smooth way than Hugo because it’s likely to be used with lower priced headphones. On paper the new DAC actually has better noise and distortion specs than its big brother.
Mojo is available now and Chord plans to offer modules for iPhone, SD card reading, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to go with it in the coming months.
