DACs

Digital-to-analogue converters are often overlooked, but the best ones can transform your system's sound

Chord Mojo 2 ₹39,999

Few real-world (read: not ludicrously expensive) products can be considered real game changers in hi-fi. But in 2015 the Chord Mojo burst onto the thenfledgling portable DAC/headphone amplifier scene as one of them, flag in hand and ready to claim territory.

The palm-sized device justified its elongated name ('Mobile Joy'), pushing the parameters of what was possible for compact, on-the-go sound quality in the three-figure price domain.

The fittingly named Mojo 2 is the long-anticipated, re-engineered replacement. And while the aesthetic hasn't exactly been overhauled for the sequel, significant progress has been made elsewhere to protect the Mojo's position at the pinnacle of the portable DAC world.

The headline development lies inside the aluminium casework and is what Chord is calling the 'UHD DSP', supposedly the world's first lossless digital signal processor. We are seeing the word 'lossless' more than ever in today's digital-savvy world, as more and more software and hardware companies strive towards bit-perfect reproduction of digital music. And here the sky-high promise is customisable digital-toanalogue conversion that doesn't degrade sound quality along the way.

Chord's proprietary 104-bit processor has opened the Mojo 2 up to a smattering of features, most notably tonal adjustments across the frequency range.

Elsewhere, a key element of the Mojo's portability has been redesigned - the battery. The Mojo 2 still charges over Micro USB, but an FPGA-based charging system has been designed to deliver not only faster but also more efficient and cooler charging. To that end, Chord claims that the Mojo 2's battery life is 'better than eight hours' (that being the claimed figure of the original Mojo).