Well, isn't this just funny. When Mojo 2 came out early this year, I pretty much just chuckled over its rather gaudy design, but now that I started looking for a good portable dac/amp combo unit, I ended up getting one mere six months later!
Initially I set my eyes on iFi Gryphon, as on the first glance it looked like a more modern, flexible unit, but when I demoed it, I found 2 major problems:
- There's not quite enough power on the unbalanced output, I mean, it gets enough volume out of all the headphones in my embarrassingly large collection, but ultimately there's so little headroom left with many of them that it's kind of bothersome, not to even mention that it simply would run out of juice if I ended up getting anything more thirsty for power. Obviously using the balanced output would fix that, but because my main rig is RME ADI-2 DAC with unbalanced outputs, there's no way that I would want to keep swapping cables around every time I'm changing equipment.
- The analog sound processing effects unfortunately weren't to my tastes. Using my desktop ADI-2 has made me pretty demanding customer regarding adjustments to sound, and while Gryphon theoretically could do both of my minimum requirements (crossfeed and bass boost for the more bass-shy headphones), unfortunately both of their implementations lacked finesse and made far too large adjustments to the sound. While I like a little, 2-4 db bass boost with headphones like HD800S or HD600 below 200hz with a gentle slope, iFi's Xbass is simply just too much and reaches too high into the frequency range muddying the sound. Meanwhile, XSpace does some odd stuff with treble, and while it sounds good with some songs, it makes others sound annoyingly shrill - not good, crossfeed should be something I can leave on and forget about it when I want to reduce listening fatigue.
I mean, it wasn't a bad device besides that, the sound quality was rather pleasing and the sheer flexibility of all the available connections and functionalities sure has a value of its own, but those problems drove me to look for other options, which ironically led me to trying Mojo 2. When I first got it in my hands for a demo and saw the design and UI in practice, my reaction was again alongside the lines of "Really?", but when I actually started listening to it, my expression changed pretty quickly. The first thing I noticed was the increase in output power, so while Gryphon had to reach up to the turbo levels when listening to classical music on HD600, here I'm not even close to the top of the volume scale before I reach the point of
enough is enough. Reassuring!
With closer listening, it became pretty much immediately evident that Mojo 2 just feels like a cleaner, more impactful device that stages the sound much better, with a sense of holography that Gryphon couldn't reach. I mean, both are good at what they do and the differences are relatively minor, but for me, they're still pretty obvious as long as I'm not just using the device for background music. Next up, the DSP features. Crossfeed? Excellent implementation, at least as good as in Adi-2 DAC and nearly as adjustable, and with zero treble foolery unlike with iFi. EQ? While 4 filters sounded like a ridiculously limited idea when I first read about them, in practice they very much allow me to do exactly what I usually want, eg. a very tasteful but still meaningful boost below 200hz. But still, the actual sound quality left the best impression on me, and is the thing that made me realize that I'm keeping the demo device within a hour of acquiring it.
That being said, I'm still not the biggest fan of the overall form of the device, and things like micro-usb ports for charging and no screen feel honestly pretty archaic for 2022's standards, but ultimately when I'm buying hifi and face a situation where I need to do compromises, sound quality is really the last thing I want to compromise on. So, despite everything, nice job with Mojo 2, Chord! I think that the fact that I ended up liking the device enough to buy it despite my negative first impressions is a pretty good testament on how much the actual performance of it impressed me
