[Kentajalli]

Actually, for the record, the Chord desktop docs have galvanic isolation, but Mojo does not:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cho...in-3rd-post-◄★☆.784602/page-735#post-12330131

My mistake, but never the less the test I suggested should reveal the problem.

 

[dakanao]

The best USB silencer that I know and use is the Minidsp USBstreamer. It converts USB to optical and then feeds the mojo through the toslink input. Optical connection is galvanic isolated by nature and works up to 24/192 with a short or good quality cable. The bass is as clear as it gets.

So the bass has the most impact this way?

 

[Totoxio]

So the bass has the most impact this way?

Yes, the bass is clearer and more layered, using my AKG N5005 iems. Highs are less harsh on hot records and in a way it "invites" you to push the volume harder. I bought the minidsp following @flyte3333 advice on this forum and for me, this is the endgame accessory I bought for my Mojo. I'm pretty happy with it.

 

[dakanao]

Yes, the bass is clearer and more layered, using my AKG N5005 iems. Highs are less harsh on hot records and in a way it "invites" you to push the volume harder. I bought the minidsp following @flyte3333 advice on this forum and for me, this is the endgame accessory I bought for my Mojo. I'm pretty happy with it.

What USB silencers have you used with the Mojo prior to the MiniDSP?

 

[Kentajalli]

What I found on the net:
Should be easy enough to rewire the leads to the other plug and remove the existing output plug.
Luckily, both the module and Mojo are of same size and the plug is exactly at same height as Mojo's socket (deducted from overlaying picture), so it should sit right at the bottom of Mojo, but the module is longer! no big ee.

.

Review of XDuoo 05BL Pro and Chord Mojo
Ok - The item arrived from China today faster than expected.
For those of you not familiar with this device - this is a Bluetooth reciever with a single digital coax output. It is made for XDuoo's own DAC, but as it happens can be connected to a Chord Mojo to add bluetooth to it.

So here is my quick find after about an hour or two with the device.
Pros:
- Small, cute, light. Does function properly as it should!
- better sound quality than expected (after some minor discoveries)
- pretty good range! see later
- easy to use, media buttons work too.
- cheap enough
Cons:
- Not a lot actually

This item is about 1mm thinner than Mojo, not counting its flared ears at ends. And internally the whole thing is actually a littler smaller than Mojo's width - so technically for those who are good with DIY and a fine saw, it can be made to fit the exact size of Mojo's end with cutting off the sides carefully and repositioning the jack, to make it look like a mini Poly ! Those who dont want to do so much, can simply resolder the output leads internally to the other (otherwise not connected) jack, and remove the current jack, to make a reasonable fit for Mojo.
Indeed it does have LDAC, aptX HD etc. at varying bitrates and sampling frequencies - they all function well, and Mojo responds to differing sampling frequencies with colour change.
Sound quality:
You see I did have a Fiio BTR5 and I did put it through its paces extensively. This guy is better by a good margin!
For one thing, Fiio had a terrible range with LDAC 990kb/s - less than a meter sometimes! XDuoo managed a good 4 meters in opensight, it only started to crackle once I stepped out of the room.
Distortion is low acros the bandwidth. BUT the bandwidth becomes narrower - the very low bass and very high treble gets muted a little.
Also compared to USB, sound looses that extra airiness that Mojo can resolve around instruments - sound stage flattens a bit.
Remember, I am comparing a lossless USB direct connection to a compressed (by the phone) BT alternative. A lot of it is/was to be expected - so I am nit-picking, there is no way a compressed audio BT connection was going to match a direct lossless connection.
Indeed the device is doing very well. I am impressed.
Codecs, Sampling Frequencies & bit rates
I played with those settings, to cut the long story short, the best combination was
LDAC 16bit 48kHz 990kb/s
Indeed 24bit made no improvements to my ear (still early days though), 660kb/s sounded as good too. However 44.1kHz and 96kHz settings made the sound loose a bit of its three dimensionality, perhaps because of extra data the codec has to compress.
However, somehow on well recorded SACD material the sound was a little better on 24bit 96kHz, but on standard CD, I preferred the mentioned setting.
Mistakes I made at first !
this is a little warning section, so you don't repeat my mistakes.
- If it is the first time you connect anything to COAX input of Mojo, the volume is set at zero! remember to put it up, or you wonder why there is no sound! Also Mojo remembers the volume setting for different inputs independently.
- I use Neutron player on my Android phone, I forgot to set High-Res Bluetooth under Generic driver settings. This meant that Hi-res audio was not routed directly to BT codec.
- My bloody phone activated its internal Dolby Atmos crap enhancer by default on bluetooth, so what I heard at beginning was very off-putting. took me a little while before I realized the damn thing comes on by itself.
Once it was switched off the sound became a very close version of USB direct connection.
Conclusion
to add bluetooth functionality to a Mojo at this price is a steal! never mind one that sounds good enough not to embarrass itself.
Besides apart from Poly I do not know of another alternative! do you ?
I have not checked battery performance yet - I will report anything else I find.
Weirdly! or is it I am imagining it, my Mojo seems to keep its cool connected to COAX compared to USB , I mean it has not warmed up yet after about an hour so far! Curious . . .
I have known myself to change my mind after long auditioning a device.
But until (if) I do, I recommend this, it really impressed me.
Diana Krall, on the girl in the other room sounds very clear and lush with XDuoo and Mojo - I easily listened to the entire album while writing this.

 

[jarnopp]

to add bluetooth functionality to a Mojo at this price is a steal! never mind one that sounds good enough not to embarrass itself.
Besides apart from Poly I do not know of another alternative! do you ?

Yes, this:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cho...n-3rd-post-◄★☆.784602/page-1363#post-12742813

 

[andrewfd]

Hi all,

I'm getting a treat for my upcoming birthday in the form of a Chord Mojo and a pair of Sennheiser HD660s headphones.

I have my old CD collection ripped into Apple Lossless (c. 250GB) on an external drive attached to a Mac mini. I have installed Universal Media Server 9.8.1 on the Mac mini to act as a uPnP server. The Mac is connected to my home network by ethernet. I have then installed foobar2000 on my Google Pixel 4 smartphone. With the phone connected to the home network by WiFi, the Foobar app is able to find the Server and play music. My plan is to connect my smartphone to the Chord Mojo with an OTG cable (provided by the retailer).

I would like to make sure that the Apple Lossless quality is finding it's way to the Mojo without interference (e.g. resampling). I have a couple of questions and apologise if they have been answered in the 2709 pages above.

1) I have read about USB Audio Player Pro and noticed that one of its features was to combat resampling that versions of Android were doing a few years ago (version 5 and earlier). However, my smartphone is running Android 11. I wondered if Google had fixed this issue over the last 6 versions since UAPP was released. Do I still need UAPP with Android 11 to avoid resampling?

2) The foobar2000 app is a bit clunky. I don't have any music on my phone, so much of the UX navigation time is spent drilling down to the server top level. When I play a track, often the album art is a large mp3 placeholder. a) Does that mean foobar2000 is resampling? b) Are there any dedicated uPnP Android client apps I should try instead?

3) On the server side and focusing on transparently delivering Apple Lossless over uPnP without resampling etc., is Universal Media Server a good option? Should I look at another server for macOS on my Mac mini?

Thanks all. Looking forward to getting my Mojo on my birthday

 

[dontfeedphils]

Hi all,

I'm getting a treat for my upcoming birthday in the form of a Chord Mojo and a pair of Sennheiser HD660s headphones.

I have my old CD collection ripped into Apple Lossless (c. 250GB) on an external drive attached to a Mac mini. I have installed Universal Media Server 9.8.1 on the Mac mini to act as a uPnP server. The Mac is connected to my home network by ethernet. I have then installed foobar2000 on my Google Pixel 4 smartphone. With the phone connected to the home network by WiFi, the Foobar app is able to find the Server and play music. My plan is to connect my smartphone to the Chord Mojo with an OTG cable (provided by the retailer).

I would like to make sure that the Apple Lossless quality is finding it's way to the Mojo without interference (e.g. resampling). I have a couple of questions and apologise if they have been answered in the 2709 pages above.

1) I have read about USB Audio Player Pro and noticed that one of its features was to combat resampling that versions of Android were doing a few years ago (version 5 and earlier). However, my smartphone is running Android 11. I wondered if Google had fixed this issue over the last 6 versions since UAPP was released. Do I still need UAPP with Android 11 to avoid resampling?

2) The foobar2000 app is a bit clunky. I don't have any music on my phone, so much of the UX navigation time is spent drilling down to the server top level. When I play a track, often the album art is a large mp3 placeholder. a) Does that mean foobar2000 is resampling? b) Are there any dedicated uPnP Android client apps I should try instead?

3) On the server side and focusing on transparently delivering Apple Lossless over uPnP without resampling etc., is Universal Media Server a good option? Should I look at another server for macOS on my Mac mini?

Thanks all. Looking forward to getting my Mojo on my birthday

I'll just comment on UAPP and say I'd go that route on the phone at any rate. UAPP is a great player and my go-to whether I'm using an external DAC or not.

 

[Kentajalli]

My choice of player for Android is Neutron media player.
There is no feature that it has not! period.
But it can be complicated as hell to setup.
On the plus point, it is a master at recognising connected DAC's, their abilities, and completely bypassing Android to make a direct lossless connection to the DAC.
I never have had any issues connection any DAC to it in the past five years or more.

 

[surfgeorge]

Hi all,

I'm getting a treat for my upcoming birthday in the form of a Chord Mojo and a pair of Sennheiser HD660s headphones.

I have my old CD collection ripped into Apple Lossless (c. 250GB) on an external drive attached to a Mac mini. I have installed Universal Media Server 9.8.1 on the Mac mini to act as a uPnP server. The Mac is connected to my home network by ethernet. I have then installed foobar2000 on my Google Pixel 4 smartphone. With the phone connected to the home network by WiFi, the Foobar app is able to find the Server and play music. My plan is to connect my smartphone to the Chord Mojo with an OTG cable (provided by the retailer).

I would like to make sure that the Apple Lossless quality is finding it's way to the Mojo without interference (e.g. resampling). I have a couple of questions and apologise if they have been answered in the 2709 pages above.

1) I have read about USB Audio Player Pro and noticed that one of its features was to combat resampling that versions of Android were doing a few years ago (version 5 and earlier). However, my smartphone is running Android 11. I wondered if Google had fixed this issue over the last 6 versions since UAPP was released. Do I still need UAPP with Android 11 to avoid resampling?

2) The foobar2000 app is a bit clunky. I don't have any music on my phone, so much of the UX navigation time is spent drilling down to the server top level. When I play a track, often the album art is a large mp3 placeholder. a) Does that mean foobar2000 is resampling? b) Are there any dedicated uPnP Android client apps I should try instead?

3) On the server side and focusing on transparently delivering Apple Lossless over uPnP without resampling etc., is Universal Media Server a good option? Should I look at another server for macOS on my Mac mini?

Thanks all. Looking forward to getting my Mojo on my birthday

Did you already buy the HD660? I just read this review recommending the older and cheaper 600 and 650 over the 660
https://www.stereophile.com/content/sennheiser-hd-660-s-over-ear-open-headphones

Happy birthday! The Mojo is a wonderful present!
I just bought myself the Hugo 2 for my 50th, but the Mojo still has a place in my heart and setups.

 

[kumar402]

If Mojo is going to be only DAC /Amp then get a good IEM for the same price. Sennheiser HD 6X0 series is more suited for desktop use.

 

[andrewfd]

I'll just comment on UAPP and say I'd go that route on the phone at any rate. UAPP is a great player and my go-to whether I'm using an external DAC or not.

Thanks. I’ll try it.

 

[andrewfd]

My choice of player for Android is Neutron media player.
There is no feature that it has not! period.
But it can be complicated as hell to setup.
On the plus point, it is a master at recognising connected DAC's, their abilities, and completely bypassing Android to make a direct lossless connection to the DAC.
I never have had any issues connection any DAC to it in the past five years or more.

Thanks. I’ll try this and compare to UAPP.

 

[andrewfd]

Did you already buy the HD660? I just read this review recommending the older and cheaper 600 and 650 over the 660
https://www.stereophile.com/content/sennheiser-hd-660-s-over-ear-open-headphones

Happy birthday! The Mojo is a wonderful present!
I just bought myself the Hugo 2 for my 50th, but the Mojo still has a place in my heart and setups.

Thanks for the birthday wishes

I went to a headphone specialist shop and tried 5 headphones using a USB stick with some reference music. The classical recordings proved to be the most revealing test material. They set me up with a PC for my USB stick and a Mojo to drive the headphones.

The Audeze and Grado options were rejected quickly by my ears. Too brash, shouty and muddled, especially with classic music.

That left Sennheiser HD600 and HD660s and the nice sales chap added in Quad ERA1 (a bit of an upsell at £600).

Whilst the Quad were very impressive, clean and mostly neutral, they are not worth the extra money over the HD660s.

I chose the HD660s in the end. They had a little more detail and power at the low frequency (e.g. timpani) and a much wider stereo soundstage. The HD600 were excellent too and probably more neutral, but they seemed to place instruments in between my ears rather than in the room around me. My ears like Sennheiser.

 

[Julius Decimus]

Thanks. I’ll try this and compare to UAPP.

If you decide try Neutron, despite Mojo sounding great with no resampling, if you upsample to 768khz (player can do that in realtime) sounds more detailed. UAPP also has upsampling function, however there you dont actually notice increase in quality, while with Neutron yes. Choose UAPP if you wish play with bit perfect and just play music, while if you use EQ, resampling and other effects definitely try Neutron.