What is it?

The Mojo 2 is  the latest version of Chord’s widely admired Mojo portable-ish DAC and headphone amplifier.

What’s great?

Thrillingly open, detailed and musical sound. Good connectivity options. 

What’s not?

Charges via microUSB. Not as portable as it thinks it is. Arcane control interface.

The bottom line

Some connectivity improvements are helpful, but fundamentally the allure of Mojo 2 is in the profound improvement it can make to your desktop or (at a push) your portable sound 

Equipment

Chord Electronics has been setting audio standards and establishing bewildering control methods since its inception in 1989. And with the original ‘Mojo’ DAC/headphone amp, the company arguably legitimised the entire ‘portable DAC’ sector – even if it was a pretty chunky device by ‘portable’ standards. 

So successful was the  Mojo from the moment it hit the market in 2015, in fact, that it inspired a slew of imitators (most of them a fair bit more portable, admittedly) from companies both venerable and upstart. Imitation is a form of flattery, certainly, but unless the Mojo 2 can put some distance between itself and all the very many alternatives it’s ‘inspired’, it could well find itself flattered into irrelevance.

Build quality

The majority of Mojo 2 is made of anodised aluminium – which feels almost as good as it looks. The casework itself is 23 x 83 x 62mm (HxWxD), but its rounded-off corners help it feel nicely palm-sized. Whether or not it’s pocket-sized is a different question, and whether or not its weight of 185g is pocket-friendly is yet another question.  

It looks and feels like a premium product, though, no two ways about it. And if you’re not the one who has to interpret the dozens of different colours in which its polycarbonate control ‘spheres’ can glow to find out what Mojo 2 is up to, the control interface is uniquely decorative too. If you are, though, lots of luck – the size of digital file Mojo 2 is dealing with, volume level, EQ setting and more besides are all indicated only by variations in colour. 

Mojo 2 is a strictly hard-wired device. The addition of a USB-C input is very welcome, and there are digital coaxial and digital optical inputs as well; analogue audio is available via either (or both) or the two 3.5mm outputs. The battery is good for roughly eight hours of use between charges – Mojo 2 still has to be charged using the elderly microUSB standard, which is a pity, but at least it doesn’t (unlike the product it replaces) get disconcertingly hot while it’s charging. 

Sound

And here the gripes and criticism come to a screeching halt. Attach Mojo 2 to your laptop, smartphone or whatever at one end,  attach an appropriately talented pair of headphones at the other (or an analogue connection to a full-size system) and the difference this DAC makes to the unassisted sound of your source player is never less than significant. In the right circumstances, it can be profound.

It creates a big, well organised soundstage. It has absolute authority over dynamic shifts both broad and fine. It expresses rhythms with the certainty of James Brown. And it knows exactly what’s going on even in the depth of a mix – no detail is too fleeting or too minor to elude it. And it does all of this while maintaining an attitude that’s all about entertainment rather than analysis.

At the bottom end, bass sounds are deep, swift and packed with information. At the opposite end of the frequency range, treble is similarly substantial, similarly rapid and similarly stacked with detail. And in between, Mojo 2 can reveal all the character, all the attitude and all the details of technique that your favourite vocalist has to give.

Integration of the frequency range is smooth, with nothing overstated and nothing underplayed. There’s a unity and coherence to the way Mojo 2 presents music that gives a strong impression of ‘performance’ – even if the music you’re listening to never previously existed outside its creator’s laptop and headphones. 

Naturally enough, the bigger and more information-rich the digital file you serve it, the more convincing and confident Mojo 2 sounds at its output stage. But it’s by no means snobby – if a bog-standard Apple Music stream is what it’s given, it’ll do its utmost to make the best of it.

In short, it seems unlikely in the extreme that you can make a more significant pound-for-pound difference to your digital audio experience than the one Mojo 2 can give you. 

Price and availability

The Chord Mojo 2 is on sale now, and it’s priced at £495.

The post Chord Mojo 2 Review appeared first on Audio Media International.

Røde NTH-100: What is it?
The NTH-100 is Rode’s first foray into the world of headphones.

Røde NTH-100: What’s great?
Articulate, revealing and confident sound. Comfortable. Good-looking (in a rugged sort of way).

Røde NTH-100: What’s not?
Sonic balance won’t suit everyone. Shorter cable is somehow a cost option.

Røde NTH-100: The bottom line
If it’s insight into a recording you want, but not insight of the dry and analytical kind, these Røde could be just the ticket.

Røde NTH-100: Equipment
Rode is an Australian company (the ‘ø’ is a nod to the founding Freeman family’s Scandinavian heritage) – it was established in the 1960s and had its first successes with condenser microphones. Anyone with even a passing interest in professional audio and/or recording equipment knows exactly what Røde is capable of.

And it’s safe to say the company isn’t chasing any kind of modish area of the headphones market with the NTH-100 – this is a closed-back, hard-wired over-ear headphone of the sort that was popular back in the last century.

Røde NTH-100: Build quality
There’s nothing remarkable about the materials Røde has specified for the NTH-100 – sturdy, quite tactile plastic, some exposed and complex angled metal for the arms of the headband, and alcantara-covered memory foam where the headphones contact the wearer at the ears and the inside of the headband. And until you remind yourself the NTH-100 cost just £149, there seems nothing remarkable about the way they’re put together either – but once you keep the asking price in mind, the Røde seem disproportionately robust and well-made.

The black-on-black colour scheme is businesslike (or dour, depending on your point of view) – but you can spend a little extra on differently coloured headbands, earcups and cables if you want to jazz things up a little. And on the subject of cables, the NTH-100 are supplied with a 2.4m cable with a 3.5mm connector at one end and a ‘twist/lock’ version at the other – it’s a sensible length for those who want to use the headphones in a professional environment, especially as the cable can attach to either earcup. But the fact that a 1.2m alternative is a cost-option seems a bit mean.

At 350g the Rode aren’t the lightest headphones around, but they’re comfortable for extended listening sessions. This is thanks in part to the ‘CoolTech’ gel in the ear-cushions that prevents the pads returning your own body heat for an impressively long time. And they stay adjusted exactly as you like them using ‘FitLock’ – a physical headband-locking mechanism that’s a strong contender for a ‘so simple it’s brilliant’ award.

Røde NTH-100: Sound

Inside each earcup, Røde has fitted a 40mm full-range transducer with a claimed frequency response of 5Hz – 35kHz. You don’t need to spend long inside the NTH-100 to realise those numbers are entirely reasonable.

The Rode are an obsessively detailed, painstaking and thrillingly open listen. Their soundstage is so spacious you might be fooled into thinking you’re listening to open-backed headphones. They organise a recording with almost military precision, giving its every element enough space to express itself unhindered. Height, width and depth are described explicitly, too – but integration is impressive at the same time. It’s not easy to combine a sense of space with a feeling of unity and singularity, but the NTH-100 manage it almost casually.

Tonality is equally impressive. The company’s ‘pro’ heritage is obvious in the swift, controlled and unshowy way they hand over low-frequency information – and bass stuff is so well-behaved that the midrange has more than enough space to do its detailed, expressive and revealing thing. At the top end, too, there’s precision allied to bite – and, as everywhere else, prodigious detail levels.

Dynamic headroom for big volume changes is more than adequate, and the Rode pay proper attention to the more nuanced harmonic variations apparent in pretty much any piece of music too. Rhythms are expressed with absolute certainty, and the low-frequency rigour the NTH-100 demonstrate means tempos are always on the front foot too. Some listeners will undoubtedly find these headphones wanting when it comes to outright bass presence, but those who value realism over unnatural, overheated and overconfident low-end sounds will realise the Røde are giving them a complete, but uncoloured, picture.

Which is not to say the NTH-100 are in any way dispassionate, overly analytical or prissy. They understand full well that music is entertainment that’s meant to be engaged with rather than a puzzle that’s there to be solved.

Price and availability
The Røde NTH-100 are on sale now, and they’re priced at £149 per pair.

The post Røde NTH-100 Headphones Review appeared first on Audio Media International.

Is there more to Austrian Audio than simply the sound of Austria? We deliver the verdict on the East Alpine sound…

What is it?

Hi-X55 is the slightly larger and slightly more expensive (£249) of Austrian Audio’s brief range of closed-back headphones. 

What’s great?

Open, forensically detailed audio reproduction. Light and comfortable enough for extended use. 

What’s not?

Somehow a shorter cable is a cost option. Earpads eventually return body-heat with interest.

The bottom line

If you want to hear the finest details of a mix but don’t want to be bored rigid as you do so, the Austrian Audio Hi-X55 are what you need.

Equipment

Rising from the ashes of AKG’s abandonment of its Vienna facility, Austrian Audio opened for business in the middle of 2017 with a couple of dozen former AKG personnel as its core team. Mindful of its heritage but with a determination to produce products that advance the art of recording and monitoring, Austrian Audio is deploying over 350 years of engineering experience.

So far, the Austrian Audio range extends to two pairs of headphones and two microphones. So the word we’re applying here is ‘judicious’.

Austrian Audio Hi-X55: Build quality

The solidity of the construction, the quality of the materials used and the miniscule tolerances in the way the Hi-X55 are put together seems somewhat at odds with the asking price. Combining metal, plastic and memory foam-filled faux leather so prudently make these headphones look, feel and (let’s not be coy) smell quite a lot more expensive than the £249 that Austrian Audio is demanding. 

Clear-headed, shrewd thinking and engineering is apparent throughout. The headband design, for example, uses all of those materials to produce something that’s comfortable even over the long haul, that adjusts with positivity, and that feels ready to withstand thousands of hours of manipulation. The hinged earcups articulate smoothly. Even the exposed bolt-heads in the arms give an impression of robust longevity rather than (as they so easily could have) making the Hi-X55 seem built down to a price.

The earpads themselves are comfortable at first and stay comfortable no matter how long your listening session. Obviously there’s nothing miraculous about them – they’ll gather the heat of your head and give it back to you eventually – but they resist the temptation to do so much longer than some alternative designs can manage.

In fact, even the ‘Austrian Audio’ logo on the earcups and on the plug at the business end of the 3 metre-long cable seems sturdy and reliable. The knowledge that a shorter (1.2m) cable is a cost option is a clanging bum note, mind you. At least the 3m cable that’s supplied as standard terminates in a 3.5mm jack and comes with a 6.3mm adapter.  

Austrian Audio Hi-X55: Sound

Obviously there’s a bit more to it than straightforward analysis, but be in no doubt: the Austrian Audio Hi-X55 are a profoundly analytical tool. If you want to peer deep into a mix, identify and isolate the elements you’re interested in and hear precisely what they’re up to, you will need to spend quite a lot more money to make a worthwhile improvement on these headphones.

In the most simple terms, the Hi-X55 lay a recording out for inspection. They serve up low-frequency information with straight-edged fanaticism, giving bass sounds proper weight and momentum but controlling them with something approaching fastidiousness. Their midrange resolution, too, allows you a direct and uncoloured view of what’s going on – and, in the case of vocalists, the sort of insight into technique that’s virtually forensic.

At the top of the frequency range the AAs stay just the right side of clinical. Treble sounds have substance and bite, and – if the recording is mastered this way – quite a lot of shine too. But the Hi-X55 resist hardening at the top end, even if you really decide to wind the volume up.

But for all their powers of insight and analysis, there’s nothing dispassionate about the sound these headphones make. They are more than happy to track the dynamic peaks and troughs of a recording, they unify the occupants of the soundstage into a whole, into a performance, rather than making them sound like a number of discrete elements like so many near-field monitors are prone to do. They muster decent rhythmic expression, too, which is more than can be said for a whole lot of competing designs. 

They’re not the most out-and-out exciting listen this sort of money can buy, it’s true, but that’s to miss the point somewhat. The Austrian Audio Hi-X55 will tell you everything you want to know about a recording, without getting all Laboratory Assistant about it. Which is a talent in and of itself.

Austrian Audio Hi-X55: Price and availability
The Austrian Audio Hi-X55 are available now, priced at £249. 

The post Austrian Audio Hi-X55 review appeared first on Audio Media International.