[Fogelstrauss]

Utopia is technically superior imo, and still my reference headphone. Its resolution, speed and dynamics are second to none. Empyrean is darker sounding (especially with the leather pads), is more enjoyable with less than optimal and brighter recordings, non-fatiguing and offers a larger soundstage. Typical planar sound, clearly superior to the 4z imo (I am no fan of the 4z at all, to be honest). Utopia and Empyrean are complementary and both really great driven directly from DAVE. I listen to the Utopia with Crossfeed 1, to the Empyrean with Crossfeed 0.

I posted some initial impressions on Eymprean here:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mez...-array-headphone.871859/page-98#post-14633089

Well put. I really like my Empyreans... but the utopias are a little bit better, if I wanna focus on the music and enjoy every little detail.

 

[SunWarrior]

How do you activate the pass-thru mode? Is it on the remote? Didn't find this in the manual?

On the remote, the OS SR (output sample rate) button, bottom right, will let you cycle through the four settings.

Red Green Blue White

 

[Birdboy01]

confusion here. The manual indicates on page 3.2 a "low/medium/high" setting. Is that for passthru?
Meanwhile, the output sample rate matrix on page 4.5 indicates red for pass-thru without reference of this "low /medium/high" setting..

 

[jscmd2000]

Sounds like the other three colors (green, blue, and white) correspond to the low, medium, and high upscaling

 

[Amberlamps]

confusion here. The manual indicates on page 3.2 a "low/medium/high" setting. Is that for passthru?
Meanwhile, the output sample rate matrix on page 4.5 indicates red for pass-thru without reference of this "low /medium/high" setting..

Red is passthrough, green and blue are hard settings for non chord dacs.

Green is for 96khz and blue for 192khz. If you have a chord dual data rate capable dac, you only need white which is full upscaling.

 

[Birdboy01]

ahh got it! thanks .. reacquainting myself with color nomenclature having moved off original H1 to DAVE

 

[Amberlamps]

ahh got it! thanks .. reacquainting myself with color nomenclature having moved off original H1 to DAVE

It’s confusing, it’s getting to the point of being waaay overboard.

Ieds were nice when they first started hitting the market, but now everything is using rgb leds and it’s beyond a joke. Mojo will always look cool because of them. I know we can dim them, but they forgot the most crucial option, Off. I think the led’s should come with that option except on mojo.

 

[racebit]

Sure I will do it tonight or over the weekend.

I did try Hugo 2 plugged into TT2, it was getting it’s sound from the mscaler through to TT2 via dual bnc cables, and then passed out of TT2 to H2’s dual data coax port.

It sounded ok for the 2 minutes that I used it for, but I will try mojo.

I plugged my iem’s into TT2 and the difference the mscaler and tt2 made was unreal, it was really good, but I didn’t think to try mojo since it couldn’t do 705/768 as it is limited to a max of 384khz.

On the past few months several people planned to report on the HMS + Mojo, but never did. Rob himself says he never tried.
I am starting to believe that when the Mojo is connected to HMS something secret happens and no one wants to report it... Maybe a genius appears asking for a wish...

 

[ZappaMan]

On the past few months several people planned to report on the HMS + Mojo, but never did. Rob himself says he never tried.
I am starting to believe that when the Mojo is connected to HMS something secret happens and no one wants to report it... Maybe a genius appears asking for a wish...

I did a not very useful test.
I played scaler into tt2, was really full, I then put the 768 output of tt2 into mojo, it sounded empty in comparison, I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t want to admit mojo had it’s limitations

Mojo only decodes half million taps, but still reports that it’s receiving a 768 output. But the dac parts can’t compete with something that costs nearly 10 times more...... before someone expresses surprise

 

[musickid]

pass thru is however many taps the chord dac has so for h2 pass thru is 49K taps. i was wondering why you say passthru is 1 tap? unless i misunderstand. merry left over turkey to all.

also how did you output tt2 into mojo ie which output on tt2?

 

[ZappaMan]

pass thru is however many taps the chord dac has so for h2 pass thru is 49K taps. i was wondering why you say passthru is 1 tap? unless i misunderstand. merry left over turkey to all.

also how did you output tt2 into mojo ie which output on tt2?

Rob says the implementation of passthrough is just 1 tap, I’m not sure why though.
The tt2 has also dual bnc output, so I was able to connect mojo to the output of tt2, like I’d connected hugo2 to mscaler, via the audioquest rca adapter.
Interesting the dual bnc output is switched off if a headphone is also connected to the front.

 

[musickid]

so 1 tap in hms but 49k taps in h2 or 98k for tt2 with passthru is the meaning i'm sure. (is that really dual bnc out it looks like dx amp outputs? that i'm not sure.) why not hms out to mojo sounds more like it?

 

[racebit]

I did a not very useful test.
I played scaler into tt2, was really full, I then put the 768 output of tt2 into mojo, it sounded empty in comparison, I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t want to admit mojo had it’s limitations

Mojo only decodes half million taps, but still reports that it’s receiving a 768 output. But the dac parts can’t compete with something that costs nearly 10 times more...... before someone expresses surprise

Thank you for the report.
Rob did say the magic started on 1M taps, so together with TT2 superiority, I guess that is expected.
But in order to get the difference the TT2 makes over Mojo, we can put the Mscaler in 0.5M Taps mode,

But in any case, do you think the TT2 alone is better than Mscaler+Mojo? That is fair comparison because those are close in price.
H2+Mscaler is also close in price to TT2 alone, so that is a fair comparison as well. But there I think there is a veredict, the H2+Mscasler wins.

 

[ray-dude]

so 1 tap in hms but 49k taps in h2 or 98k for tt2 with passthru is the meaning i'm sure. (is that really dual bnc out it looks like dx amp outputs? that i'm not sure.) why not hms out to mojo sounds more like it?

Yes they are. Grossly over simplifying, the DX amp is basically a high output power version of Robs DACs, without the WTA1 filter (the part that has all the taps)

When you connect dual BNC with a 16x signal (for example, from the Blu2 or HMS) to one of Robs DACs, it bypasses the WTA1 filter. With the DX amps, that piece is eliminated and it just has the dual BNC inputs.

That being said, TT2 with DX amps won’t be doing much: source selector and DX volume control (DAVE would being doing even less...just source select). Unless you’re using the headphone out of the TT2, the HMS should be able to connect to the DX amp directly

 

[musickid]

h2 and mscaler outperforms a solo tt2. mscaler and mojo makes no sense at all. only dual coax/bnc chord dacs with hms. i'm not convinced tt2 out into mojo is the right thing to do as it's passing digital info out in a much longer chain which is not designed for that. only hms into mojo will give a true idea.

wrote this before i saw your post ray. thanks for clarifying it. happy new year. mk