Cary 805s or Atma Sphere M60s?

I agree with Xronx opinion regarding some OTL amps, They certainly do have their good points, but ultimately come off on the thin and lean side of reality. I listen to live un amplified jazz quite often, and in my experience a very good SET amp gets closer to the true natural sound of instruments and the human voice. There`s an undeniable fullness and organic bloom/warmth the live music presents that seems watered down, at least with some OTLs(the diet coke version).SETs preserve more of the fundamental tone as well as the beautiful overtones present with acoustic instruments, at least to me.

I have`nt heard the Tenor OTL, just the Atmasphere models. I understand in theory, removing the output transformer should be an advantage, however SETs with good transformers just sound more real.
Best Regards,

Very happy with my 805 AE. Pretty versatile with it's power rating. Had it on my Maggie 3.6's last night.

Charles1dad, I know we share our love of 300b amps. I use them on my hi-eff system. The 805 was an experiment to see if I could get that SET magic with the Mags. Works for me. I thought Cary used the 300b tube as just a driver tube for the 845/211 output tube but found out the 805 is really a 300b "amp" driving the 845/211 tube thru an interstage transformer. That's probably why I like it so much. Kinda like a Cherry Coke? :-)

Onemug,
That`s very interesting, of all the maggie threads I`ve read over the years 90% of the owners say these speakers require much power(usally SS amps) to really make them come alive. Your system must sound special with this unique combo.

Goes to show the difference between theory and practice, on paper you would never think the 805s could drive the Maggies optimally, in terms of both power and current to drive the low impedances in the bass region - yet you never know till you try. The 805s must be very special, would love to try them with my tube friendly speakers.

It's a bit dangerous to overgeneralize about OTL sound. The AtmaSpheres sound much different than the Juole-Electras; the J-Es sound very rich, to the point that I htought they were colored. Very unlike the AtmaSpheres, adn very unlike the demo I heard with Cary 805s.