DALEAfter the 2020 Nobeoka factory fire, there is a shortage of Asahi Kasei DACs and complimentary AKM chips. Many manufacturers switched to chips from other makers for their newest DACs, some even modified their current models to use ESS chips instead of AKM DAC chips.
DALEThere is absolutely nothing wrong with theses dacs chips sets. . I have them in 2 devices RME adi-1 and AK 100mk2 and there seems to be a preference for the AKM chip version over the ESS in the RME.