Chord Mojo(1) DAC-amp ☆★►FAQ in 3rd post!◄★☆

[Takeanidea]

@Takeanidea
hi trev

My MOJO is arriving today!

Oh dear....you win again......

 

[uzi2]

That's a nearly complete position statement, I would add that this may include distortion at levels that are inaudible, just to be absolutely clear

In fact, now that I think about it, connecting to the CMA800R sounds like a good idea... Anyone know whether I can go from 3.5mm from the Mojo into RCA for the CMA800R? It'll be single-ended only, rather than balanced, but I can probably slum it with the 0.00038% distortion. Right?

Is that including the 0.00017% from the Mojo?
3.5mm to twin RCA cable is very common and easy to find - or use an adapter.

 

[Takeanidea]

Sorry for OT but I just had to ask.

How did you manage to reshell your flare audio iem and your X11i? Or are they just custom ACS eartips?

They are full custom earsleeves. In the same way that ACS in the US makes custom earsleeves. I have IE800 and XBA4ip earsleeves in the planning stage with the same company and we are working closely together to achieve the same results that they have got with K3003 X10/11i & the Flares. The smaller earsleeves are fantastic quality and I am now awaiting my full colour non prototypes having gone through lots of different tweaks to see which sounded the best. When they have got everything right I shall put a review up. The company are not ready yet to supply headfiers with world class custom earsleeves ; not until mine come back and are world class like they can do the smaller IEMs.
For any headfiers interested in getting sleeves for their smaller IEMs, a DEEP impression is absolutely essential, nothing else will achieve the pinnacles of sound quaity your iems are capable of and no design can compensate for that.
The company in question are Snugs. https://snugsearphones.co.uk/
Making an IEM into a custom , if that's possible, is in my opinion the single best upgrade you can make to your portable system

 

[uzi2]

  They are full custom earsleeves. In the same way that ACS in the US makes custom earsleeves. I have IE800 and XBA4ip earsleeves in the planning stage with the same company and we are working closely together to achieve the same results that they have got with K3003 X10/11i & the Flares. The smaller earsleeves are fantastic quality and I am now awaiting my full colour non prototypes having gone through lots of different tweaks to see which sounded the best. When they have got everything right I shall put a review up. The company are not ready yet to supply headfiers with world class custom earsleeves ; not until mine come back and are world class like they can do the smaller IEMs.
For any headfiers interested in getting sleeves for their smaller IEMs, a DEEP impression is absolutely essential, nothing else will achieve the pinnacles of sound quaity your iems are capable of and no design can compensate for that.
The company in question are Snugs. https://snugsearphones.co.uk/
Making an IEM into a custom , if that's possible, is in my opinion the single best upgrade you can make to your portable system

ACS are a UK company, but years ago they did make custom sleeves for Etymotic (US). They worked well with the lower end models, but didn't allow a deep enough fit to get the best out of the ER4S.

 

[Takeanidea]

 
ACS are a UK company, but years ago they did make custom sleeves for Etymotic (US). They worked well with the lower end models, but didn't allow a deep enough fit to get the best out of the ER4S.

They do now - I've dragged them into the world of headfi

 

[uzi2]

  They do now - I've dragged them into the world of headfi

So are Snugs made by ACS?

 

[WCDchee]

So, two questions...

If source direct is always best, why was there a popularisation of headphone amplifiers in the first place (when you could just as easily use the jack in the CDP, speaker amplifier, or MP3 player)?

Is anyone naysaying this absolutely sure that the load characteristics for any amplifier are the same as any other? Multi crossover IEMs handle substantially differently to a single dynamic driver, and I can say as an EASY to observe fact that the Pure II+ can drive the Layla's more cleanly (treble opens up, always an easy tell)...

That is the key here, what the load does to the amplification, and we know that is not perfect on the Hugo (hiss on IEMs and reported inability to drive harder cans like the HD800 to their upmost ability), so why can the same not be true here?

I'm happy either using mojo on its own, or with an amp strapped to its belly, however for cleaness of sound from top to bottom that award goes to the Vorzuge...

If I am, as others purport, living in a compromised world, so be it...

Edit: whilst I'm here, might as well add that adding a line level component to mojo's belly seems to eliminate the phone signal noise problem...

I think from my conversation with rob, most of the explanations out there of not adding an additional component are not quite accurate.

Usually, if we plug our headphones into the dac output stage (line out), we can actually get a pretty decent volume level. In IEMs, it's probably going to be too loud actually. The problem is that the load that IEMs and headphones presents is usually considerably Low impedance not going above 600 ohms. This creates a sizeable current draw which the dac's output stage is not designed to handle, causing signal deterioration.

This is rectified by using a headphone amplifier which has a high input impedance and this causes a very Low current to be drawn from the dac. Plugging the headphone, which is of considerably lower impedance into the headphone amp would then result in a higher current draw from the headphone amp. However the headphone amp is designed for this function this, would perform considerably better.

Now contrary to what some people might believe, a line out signal does not come straight from the DAC chip. It has to pass through an analog stage which helps to prepare the signal to be a line signal. In most DACs, the analog stage is required to do some filtering of sorts, and as such, leaves the designers unable to create an analog section which is capable of putting out a higher current.

In the case of the chord DACs though, the unique dac topology removes the filtering required by the analog stage. As such, this analog stage which normally prepares a signal to be a line signal can then be designed in such a way that allows it the separate function of functioning well at higher current levels. This is the reason why the Hugo and the mojo do not have separate amp sections.

Now double amping usually helps improve the signal if a good amplifier is used. Why is that so? With my phone for example, if I amp the headphone out, the high input impedance will cause the phone's amp to have a Low current draw. Thus the distortion from the phone's amp will be minimal. This allows an improvement with an external amplifier even with double amping.

In the case of the Hugo and the Mojo though, Rob Watts proposes that the analog stage has such a Low distortion even at high current draws that you would be hard pressed to find some, if any, headphone amplifier that can top this.

Hope this clears things up

 

[Turrican2]

 
So are Snugs made by ACS?

nope, snugs are made by snugs. Take a look at my 'sources' pic those are the k3003 versions.
 
/end de-rail.

 

[GreenBow]

  can i ask as a transport to the mojo which would be better in getting the best sound quality a windows 8 tablet like hp slate 7 which is a 7 inch tablet, or an android phone
 
with the hp plate 7 i can use the jriver player and all its pluggins but downside is battery life which sucks as u cant play music with screen turned off 
 
but i tested my hp slate 7 with ifi dsd and to be honest its a big difference than using an adroid phone for the same song 
 
this is to be used a trasnportable set up so I am not concerned about portability but my goal is to have the best transportable setup 
 
whats your thoughts

For now it will depend on the operating system that the Windows tablet/transport uses. Meaning if it's full version of Windows then it will be fine. If it's phone version of Windows, people have found that does not support OTG which is needed. OTG might be implemented for phones when Win 10 release for phones rolls out in December.

 

[Sound Eq]

  For now it will depend on the operating system that the Windows tablet/transport uses. Meaning if it's full version of Windows then it will be fine. If it's phone version of Windows, people have found that does not support OTG which is needed. OTG might be implemented for phones when Win 10 release for phones rolls out in December.

its a full version of windows 8, my question would it be better using a full win8 than an android

 

[Burju]

Thank you Todd Green for my Mojo.

You had me at Hello


Cheers

 

[psikey]

  can i ask as a transport to the mojo which would be better in getting the best sound quality a windows 8 tablet like hp slate 7 which is a 7 inch tablet, or an android phone
 
with the hp plate 7 i can use the jriver player and all its pluggins but downside is battery life which sucks as u cant play music with screen turned off 
 
but i tested my hp slate 7 with ifi dsd and to be honest its a big difference than using an adroid phone for the same song 
 
this is to be used a trasnportable set up so I am not concerned about portability but my goal is to have the best transportable setup 
 
whats your thoughts

 
I only use my Mojo with my Shure SE846's either out of my Dell XPS 13 laptop (same size as SurfacePro4) with JRiver or my Samsung Smartphone with UAPP.  Sounds identical (when JRiver configured correctly) and with my XPS13 having 10hrs+ battery life even with screen on it is portable and last for ages but my Note 4 battery last for ages too.
 
Posted previously
 
XPS 13 with Mojo (photo taken before one with Mojo mods below)

 
My Note 4 Rig (coated in Vinyl for some protection and Vecro'ed to a spare Note 4 case (so I can easily take the Note 4 out for use in other case)

 

 

[NZtechfreak]

For now it will depend on the operating system that the Windows tablet/transport uses. Meaning if it's full version of Windows then it will be fine. If it's phone version of Windows, people have found that does not support OTG which is needed. OTG might be implemented for phones when Win 10 release for phones rolls out in December.

Given the Continuum dock it seems likely Windows Phone will have some OTG type functionality (if USB C then it's not OTG, it's naked into the standard). Whether that extends to USB audio though... I'll be having hands on with a 950XL soon and will try it out, I don't think it's on release candidate firmware yet though.

 

[jcoops16]

I use amazon prime music and have a free 3 month trial of google play music and was wondering if I can bypass the upsampling with android by using UAPP like others do with tidal?

 

[NZtechfreak]

I use amazon prime music and have a free 3 month trial of google play music and was wondering if I can bypass the upsampling with android by using UAPP like others do with tidal?

Yes, but a bit trickier. Workaround is to access GPM via Bubble UPnP, and then access GPM in UAPP via its inbuilt support for DLNA/UPnP.