Outboard DACs

Although Exposure has included a DAC option in various of its integrated amplifiers, this new model is only the third ‘purist’ outboard DAC from the brand since its first full-width unit, the 2010S2 DAC, was launched in 2012 followed by a DSD update in 2016. Those units were equipped with the Wolfson WM8742 DAC while the latest ‘DAC modules’ offered by Exposure are now typically based on Asahi Kasei (AKM) chips – the 3510 amplifiers [HFN Nov ’21 & Nov ’22] use the AK4493 DAC, for example, although the 3510 CD player [HFN Sep ’24] still hosts a Burr-Brown DF1704/PCM1704-based analogue stage.

The new Exposure DAC featured here was bubbling away on designer Tony Brady’s workbench for much of this period. The original version – conceived some six years ago – was slated to use the AK4497 DAC, before the devastating AKM factory fire in 2020. Once chip supplies resumed, the Exposure DAC was re-worked for the AK4499 chip and then, more recently, for Asahi Kasei’s flagship two-chip AK4191EQ upsampling/noise-shaper and AK4499EXEQ DAC. Only now, following years of anticipation, has the Exposure DAC finally broken cover! PM