Okay, so I recently got my hands on a Chord Mojo 2. Super excited, right? I’d heard amazing things. Plugged it into my computer, connected my headphones… and nothing. Total silence. My heart sank a little, I’m not gonna lie.
My first thought was, “Did I even turn it on right?” I mean, the Mojo 2 has these cool, colorful buttons, but it’s not exactly intuitive at first. I pressed and held the power button – the one that’s supposed to cycle through colors. Yep, it lit up, went through its little rainbow sequence, and settled on a color indicating the input. Still no sound.
Next, I checked the volume. The Mojo 2 has these two little sphere-shaped buttons for volume up and down. I mashed the “+” button repeatedly, making sure it wasn’t just muted or something. The color changed, so I knew the button was working, but still… nothing. Dead air.
Okay, time to troubleshoot like a slightly panicked, but determined, audiophile. I started with the most obvious stuff:
- Headphones: Are they plugged in all the way? Yes. I even tried a different pair of headphones, just in case. Nope, still silence.
- Source: Was my computer actually sending audio to the Mojo 2? I went into my sound settings (this is on Windows, by the way) and checked the output device. Yep, “Chord Mojo 2” was selected. I even tried playing some music through different apps (Spotify, YouTube, a local music file) – still nothing.
- USB Cable: Could it be a bad cable? I swapped it out for another USB cable I knew was working. Still no dice.
- Drivers: Maybe I needed to install some drivers? I went to the Chord Electronics website, found the Mojo 2 page, and downloaded the latest drivers for Windows. Installed them, restarted my computer… and held my breath. Still. No. Sound.
The “Aha!” Moment (With a Little Help)
At this point, I was starting to get really frustrated. I’d spent a good chunk of money on this thing, and it was basically a very pretty, very silent brick. So, I did what any self-respecting tech nerd would do: I hit the forums.
I started Googling “Chord Mojo 2 no sound” and found a bunch of threads on various audio forums. It turns out, I wasn’t the only one who’d experienced this. And, thankfully, some very kind souls had figured out a few common culprits.
It turned out to be a combination of two things:
- The Input: Even I chose correct input with color button, I needed to cycle through it, and turn it off and on again.
- Sample Rate/Bit Depth: This was the real kicker. Apparently, the Mojo 2 can be a bit picky about the sample rate and bit depth of the audio signal it’s receiving. I went back into my Windows sound settings, found the “Advanced” properties for the Mojo 2, and… bingo! It was set to some crazy high sample rate that my headphones (or maybe the Mojo 2 itself) didn’t like. I changed it to something more standard, like 44.1kHz/16-bit or 48kHz/24-bit, and…
MUSIC! Glorious, beautiful music! I almost cried with relief. It was such a simple fix, but I’d been pulling my hair out for hours.
So, the moral of the story? If you get a Chord Mojo 2 and you’re not getting any sound, don’t panic. Check the basics, sure, but pay close attention to the sample rate and bit depth settings in your operating system. It might just save you a whole lot of frustration.