The Chord Poly is a music streamer/player that couples with the Mojo DAC/Amp. It plugs into the USB end of the Mojo and the two fit in a case to make a single unit that can wirelessly stream HD audio from WiFi, Bluetooth, or AirPlay connected devices. For the best fidelity you can play music directly from Poly’s onboard Micro SD slot. You control it from a smartphone for the ultimate mobile audio streamer. It can also be controlled from a tablet or computer if you want a larger screen. Chord also claims the Poly is “Roon ready”.
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This is a really fiddly device to use, with a lot of quirks and issues that spoiled the experience (for me) - and while it’s very cool in what it can do, and it results in excellent sound, please make sure you read up on the issues around it carefully before buying one.
Chord have an unusually extensive FAQ for most of these issues - and it’ll give you a better idea of how this thing works in practice than the user-manual.
For example, if you want to play back music from the microSD card slot you’ll need a third-party DLNA/MPD compatible control point application (the recently released “GoFigure” app, from Chord, is really for configuration - there’s a very limited play-back option in there).
And using it both at home and on the go results in a lot of faffing about changing the network/mode configuration. Sadly there’s no seamless transition from, say, using it as a Roon end-point at home and as a DLNA renderer (for microSD card playback) on the go. You’ll be waiting for timeouts or force-closing apps or reconfiguring the units connections every time.
I liked the potential, but I returned mine as it was just too much of a pain to use. Hopefully the “2Go” version (the Hugo 2 equivalent to Poly) will address these issues.
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This is very useful advice . It was worth joining the network for this alone!
If you want to benefit from the Mojo sound but with full source facilities you’re better using an output from such as Fiio X5 into the Mojo.
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I was recently on the fence about whether to purchase a Poly for my Mojo. This article did a great job outlining the strengths and weaknesses of the device and helped me decide to wait until stability improves. Hope it helps out others as well.
http://audiofi.net/2018/05/chord-poly-streamer-player-raising-your-mojo/
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Just a thought… since this is the only Poly thread I could find.
Might be worth changing the title of this thread to Chord Poly - Official Thread under the category “Official AMP/DAC/DAP Model Discussion”
Not sure if only @andrew or @taronlissimore have this authority though…
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It has been moved into the proper category and tagged for visibility! Thanks for the heads up.
Thinking of getting a used Poly as a Roon ready endpoint. Is this device still having issues or are they mostly resolved?
My issues with Poly were only when I left the house. When Poly was continuously connected to the same WiFi I never saw any problems. Thanks for the great idea to use my Poly since I recently moved up to a Chord 2go and Hugo 2. Cheers!
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I ordered the poly so looking forward to it’s versatility.
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I’m interested in the Poly, but it looks a little pricey for my needs. I’d end up only using it for bluetooth. Anyone using the poly for only bluetooth and have a good experience? I’ll be streaming from an iPhone.
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I am very happy with it. It’s a wonderful Roon endpoint and sounds great (no more laptop electrical storm affecting the dynamic range). Because I bought it used, I had to update the firmware and that was a pain but now works reliably. Now considering getting the 2go/2Yu in the future for my Qutest.
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I had a Poly for about 6 months.
It has great features and (paired with the mojo) sounds fantastic.
I found that it really excelled for mobile home use. There’s a wonderful feeling of freedom in being able to walk around your house with your favorite headphones.
However the software interface was maddening and, ultimately, why I choose to sell my Poly. Any switch in mode is dreadfully unreliable and time consuming. In addition, there were times when an audible noise floor appeared, often after charging or in wireless modes.
So on one hand the mobility and sound quality brought me joy and on the other the reliability and usability brought me pain. In the end, my dollars are worth something more consistent.
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Hello everyone,
Long story short I have the option to buy Chord Mojo & poly together for $500 (2nd hand of course) and also fiio Q5s for $250 (also 2nd hand).
I want this to be my “transportable” setup (as in not something I listen to on the subway but something I take to work and set on my desk and move room to room at my house)
Full disclosure I’m fairly new to the hobby and currently my main headphone is a Beyerdynamic DT1770 which I love. Will add Sennheiser HD660s shortly and go up from there.
This for now will act as my main amp and Dac and from what I’ve gathered the chord stack might be quite enough for a solid state until you go up to +$1000 headphones.
I’m worried about the battery life of chord and the connectivity issues and wondering if I’d be better off saving $250 and go with Q5s
Any feedback is appreciated
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I have the combo and love it. But since the pandemic started, mostly using it as a Roon endpoint in my home office. My battery life isn’t the greatest and mostly due to the Mojo side (have had the unit for 2-3 years now). Its due for a replacement battery.
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I’ve had both, but not at the same time. I ended up with the Q5S based on user experience and value.
Personally, I’d go with the Q5S. The main reason being the experience of use of the go. For use at home with good WiFi coverage, I prefer the chord. However, anytime you are switching between Bluetooth and WiFi, it is a total pain in the butt. This is also super frustrating because I had my music on the darn card in the Poly, but it’s such a pain to access. Lastly, my Mojo would give off an audible hum sometimes after charging. The hum itself was annoying, but its inconsistent nature was maddening. If it only happens sometimes, why? Was there something I could do to prevent it? I experimented a bunch and only ended up with frustration.
The Q5S doesn’t do WiFi which means no UPnP/DLNA and no HiRes, which is considerable downside. The Q5S has better battery life, just works, and was considerably cheaper. When on the go, I don’t have to bake-in an extra 5 min to make sure I’m going to be able to listen to music.
Just FYI, for those who are still looking at the MOJO, I saw that Guitar Center which was previously sold out has moved their MOJO to Backordered and are starting to take orders at a $309 price. Considering USED Mojo’s are still selling for $400, I’d say that this is a pretty sweet deal. (Chord Electronics Mojo DAC Headphone Amp | Guitar Center
Confirmed that they are tentatively going to be shipping June 19th.
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Good to know. I wonder if the price implies that a new version is in the works…
There’s a headfi speculation thread about a v2 Mojo that, lol, has been going for three years now.
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The current Mojo/Poly/Go Figure combination doesn’t allow for offline playing of Qobuz content stored on Poly’s SD card, does it?
The Chord Mojo and Poly have been out for over 6 and 4 years (respectively) now, and have been top sellers for the British company who specialize in unique and luxurious designs, and custom FPGA DACs. I’ve only recently been an owner of this duo and my main reason for purchasing this set was significant discounted used pricing on and the inclusion of Roon into my audio chain.
The Mojo is Chord’s well-regarded portable DAC/Amp that takes the FPGA DAC set-up of the Chord Hugo 1 and Hugo TT and dumps it into a small palm-sized transportable amp/dac with 2 headphone jacks, and USB and Optical inputs. The Mojo has been heavily reviewed in the past so I won’t touch up too much on its capabilities and how it works on its own. For those who do care though, I do find the Mojo to be a nice, warmer than neutral portable unit with a high level of depth and quality. I don’t think it hits above its price class anymore, but is still well within its rights for the offer price, especially when you buy it used. Its limitations are, of course, its use of the out-dated micro-usb inputs, but that’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.
The real take I want to talk about here is how the Poly works in unison with the Mojo to give a digital transport and Roon endpoint that can (or cannot) compete with Android-based digital audio players.
The Poly came out in 2017 with a lot of fanfare. It’s a rather expensive module that connects to one end of the Mojo through the micro-usb ports. The Poly adds several capabilities to the Mojo with only a minimal footprint increase:
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Wifi streaming for Roon, Airplay or DNLA
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SD Card + MPD/DNLA Server
The Poly also has its own rechargeable battery, and its single micro-usb port can charge both Mojo and Poly, though not simultaneously. The Mojo will charge first, followed by the Poly. Both Poly and Mojo will last about 8 hours of playback.
Using the Poly
I have used the Poly in all its modes at this point now: Roon Streamer, Airplay Streamer, DNLA and MPD server using the SDCard slot, and using both normal wifi access point method and using it as a wifi hotspot.
It is an interesting beast. And not the most user-friendly solution, even with its most up-to-date firmware at the time of writing: v2.04. I have heard from Chord directly that a new firmware is in its final testing phase, and its already been released for the Chord 2Go (the Hugo 2 equivalent).
Poly Set-Up and GoFigure App
The GoFigure App is available on both the Android Play Store and the Apple App Store and is the main controlling mechanism for the Poly. The app uses bluetooth to connect to the Poly and for the most part, it works every time. It’s a tad slow however, with connection to the device taking a minute or so, but once it’s connected, it seems pretty stable.
In the GoFigure app, the user is able to change between wifi and hotspot settings, Roon and “Everything Else” and also play MPD Playlists if available on the SD Card. In addition, firmware updates are made available through this app.
My biggest gripe about this app is that its interface isn’t the most user-friendly nor the most intuitive. This is especially true given the use of the SD Card features. The MPD server that the Poly runs does not use traditional m3u playlists, but instead, uses MPD playlist, and requires additional client software to create playlists. More on that later…
Roon End Point
Setting the Mojo-Poly as a Roon Endpoint was super easy. Once you’re connected to the same wifi network, and activate the Poly to Roon mode in the GoFigure App, it was almost instantaneously available as a Roon Audio Device in the Roon interface. Once added, I never had connectivity issues with the Mojo-Poly as long as I was within my wifi network.
Once connected, I was quickly able to pick music through my Roon app on my phone and it would play instantly on the Mojo-Poly with the volume marbles used to control gain. This was the primary purpose for my purchase and I am happy this works very well.
SD Card + MPD Server
When I was looking into the Poly, one of the features that looked promising was the inclusion of the microsd card slot. I thought, hey, this could be a digital audio player replacement!
I was kind of wrong. I put in a 512GB microsd card and it took a good 15-20 minutes for the GoFigure app to load up the data into its database. And, each time you change the contents of the card, you’ll have to refresh the database again, for another 15 minutes. Yikes.
Then, I found out the GoFigure app can’t actually play the music, unless you have pre-existing playlists. So I thought I’d just make a couple m3u playlists that every other music player uses. Wrong. I actually had some already on the sdcard and was wondering why it didn’t recognize it. Oh, that’s because the Poly only reads MPD playlist. What the heck is that?
After some more research, and reading the actual manual, I found out that the Poly runs an MPD or DNLA server that hosts and plays the files if you use a compatible client. Luckily there are some on Android and iOS that I was able to use. My favorites for each are MAFA for Android, and Rigelian for iOS. Both of these are MPD Clients.
Connecting to the poly through these 3rd party apps was also a challenge. You’ll need to load up the GoFigure app and find the ip address once you are on wifi. If you use Hot Spot mode, you’ll just have to pray that the MPD client will recognize the Poly hotspot and server, because I couldn’t get it to work on some of the various client apps.
Anyway, once loaded, I was able to quickly load up albums, artists, and folders, BUT, no album art! What the heck?
Yes, that firmware thing I was talking about earlier. The current firmware only has an older MPD server installation which does not allow for many basic tagging features including embedded album art. The new Chord firmware for the 2Go does include this, but currently not for the Poly.
So, I have to rely on the album art downloads from the client software, which is quite hit or miss on getting the right albums or even artist pictures.
If I run it through DNLA clients, then this is less of a problem, but there just aren’t any good “free” or inexpensive ones on Android or iOS that also have nice user interfaces. In fact, most of them have awful, awful interfaces to use.
So, my question to Chord is, WHY DO YOU NOT MAKE YOUR OWN APP HAVE THIS CAPABILITY?
Wrap-Up
Poly is a frustrating device. It has quirks. It isn’t refined, and it cost a lot of money at full retail pricing. I didn’t pay anywhere near that price luckily, and in fact, paid less than the full retail price of poly for both the Mojo and Poly and the Dignis case, so I got something I think is worth the value I paid. At full cost, I’d be weary and would perhaps lean with dealing with an Android-based device.
Roon seems to play nicer with Android now in one of the more recent updates, letting users finally use their hardware keys correctly. Had I known, I would have considered an Android DAP again. Perhaps I will?
In the meantime, I am pretty content with the Chord Mojo+Poly for Roon and it works absolutely flawlessly for that regard. If I use it as a portable music player using its internal SD Card slot – well – that’s a more frustrating experience.
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Whew. Have tried everything:
- Poly Hotspot
- SD Card
- MConnect
- Airplay
Have not been able to get any of those to work. This is a mess. The GoFigure app is counter-intuitive. Poly manual is totally confusing. Haven’t been able to stream anything from my iPhone 15 Pro to the Poly. Reading this thread hasn’t helped.
Can anyone point me to definitive setup instructions from an iPhone 15 to Chord Poly?
Did a factory reset, and set it up for Roon over my WIFI network. Works like a charm from my Mac Mini. Hi-Res sounds great. Running Poly software version 3.2.4
So I have given up on the On-The-Go use case for the Poly/Mojo 2 for now. 