Exposure 2010S

Exposure has been around for a while, and has acquired a formidable reputation among British specialist hi-fi companies. The original product range was based on amplifiers and their performance was very much a matter of taste - some loved 'em, some the opposite. Things have changed in the market and in the company and the products may not quite excite the passions they used to, but Exposure has resisted the temptation to expand into other areas of audio and still majors on amplifiers, with just a couple of CD players and an FM tuner rounding out the catalogue.

This amplifier is from the lower end of the company's range. It's based on a model which has been around for some time (the 2010) and which has been well and widely liked. Not wishing to blow the reputation then, Exposure has made some fairly modest changes to the design, most significant of which is an increase in nominal power from 50 watts to 75 watts. The look is slightly different, with thicker metalwork too, but despite all this the price remains unchanged at £600. Not the cheapest 75 watts around, but amplifiers are not sold by length! The whole point is not more watts, but more refined ones - and smarter ones, too. This might not be the most visually arresting amp around but it's very nicely finished and easy on the eye.

It's nicely built inside, too, which may or may not have any direct effect on sound but bodes well for the general quality assurance - backed up by a confident three-year guarantee. Facilities are basic, with six identical inputs, though one can optionally be turned into a phono stage by the addition of an internal circuit board. You get a remote control but no tone controls, nor balance. Exposure has never included such fripperies! Completing the specification, a 'preamp output' allows the addition of a second (power) amplifier for bi-amping, using separate amplifier sections for the bass and treble parts of the loudspeakers, or if that's just a little overambitious one can use the double speaker terminals for bi-wiring instead - separate cables to each speaker section but fed from the same amplifier.

Sound
This is an amp that thrives on real live music. It just loves to get stuck in and enjoy the fun of Dixieland jazz, the drama of opera or the heartfelt emotions of simple acoustic folk. It gives this impression because it sounds really, well, live. It has a great kick in the bass and a nice way with little details that ensures instruments are well differentiated from each other. If you listen to orchestral violins, for instance, a dozen or more near-identical instruments playing in unison, you'll find with many amplifiers that it is hard to tell them apart. You just get a vague and slightly synthetic wash of violin-ish sound. Not with the 2010S, though. You can really picture all those individual bows scrubbing up and down on the strings, each making a subtly different sound from the others, the end result being that wonderful full tone that led composers to write for massed violins in the first place.

There's a similar effect with massed voices, and here the amp's excellent stereo imaging is brought into play too, clearly showing how the singers in a chorus are ranged across the stage (always assuming the recording has been reasonably well made, of course - no amp will salvage a poor one!). And with solo voices those little clues that make people aurally unique are beautifully preserved and presented.

How about really grand-scale stuff, where the little details are not what one notices? Good news here too, with everything from glam rock to fortissimo orchestra holding well together and working up a real pitch of excitement. Again, lesser amps will often go to pieces and make the sound all disjointed, chaotic and anticlimactic, but there's no such behaviour here, and even really difficult sounds like cymbals keep their focus.

So a complete stormer, then? Pretty much, actually. The 75 watts on tap is quite a lot of power but with small speakers in big rooms you may start to run out, and sure enough if you spring for the finest that two or three grand can buy you can expect greater authority and refinement, but there's really rather little in the way of criticism to be made here. Needless to say the basics are all there, with noise near-inaudible under practically any conditions, and for peace of mind we confirmed that measurements on the amp show no worrying symptoms.

Verdict:

Overall then, a fine choice for a wide variety of musical tastes, which seems to chime well with a variety of partnering equipment too. Add smart looks, a good corporate track record for reliability and a friendly price - how could we not be impressed! Compare with our review of the NAD C372. What do you think of the Exposure 2010S? Have you got an Exposure amp already? Tell us about it in our forum.