[vladpetric]

Like many people, I got a Mojo in 2016 - a great sounding value DAC. After a couple of years its battery died: it could not hold charge anymore.

As replacing its battery at the local service center (New York) had an estimated cost of 130$ plus shipping, I decided instead to try operating it without a battery.

The most difficult part was finding a hex key to open it (unfortunately, I can't tell you which one it is, as I found one in my employer's maker shop, without a label). After that, removing the battery was straightforward - it really is meant to be easily replaced, once you open it.

My Mojo did work afterwards - but I soon discovered that it needs more than 1W of power, when running without a battery. With a simple Amazon-style charger it would make click sounds all the time. So I got a 5V iFi power adapter that can output 2.5W, and now the click sounds are gone, and the sound is again glorious. I'm using a Beyerdynamic DT880 / 600 Ohms headphone (not exactly an easy to drive thing).

Now my Mojo is living a second life as a nice desktop DAC. Note that it still turns itself off automatically after a while when idling, which not a big deal as far as I'm concerned

Obviously, don't do anything like this if you don't know what you're doing (don't be an electrostatically charged bull in an electronics shop ...), and it will probably void your warranty, if you still have it.

 

[Mightygrey]

I'm also using my Mojo in this fashion on my desktop and getting far more use out of it as a result.

In fact, it's even quite useful as an all-digital pre-amp - with its 2 x 3.5mm analogue outs I'm using it to attenuate volume and send a signal to my Burson Bang power amp and my subwoofer at the same time.

 

[jbarrentine]

Very interested in this. It doesn't turn off while you're listening to it though, right?

 

[vladpetric]

Very interested in this. It doesn't turn off while you're listening to it though, right?

Nope, it doesn't. Just keep in mind that:

1. There are no guarantees that the Mojo will work if you do the above. OTOH I found the process straightforward after finding the right hex key (so not much to lose if you try)
2. Mojo can shut itself down from thermal throttling as well. With my headphones (>250 Ohms, so higher voltage, lower current) it never happened after baterioctomy, but YMMV. However, if you have a power hungry headphone, you may want to also use a proper amp
3. You should probably get a low noise, high amp USB power adapter (like the iFi)

 

[jbarrentine]

All in all I'm just curious how the mojo sounds vs the qutest. It's interesting for sure.

 

[vladpetric]

All in all I'm just curious how the mojo sounds vs the qutest. It's interesting for sure.

Well if you figure it out by all means do let me know . I don't own a qutest.