set vs otl, which is the most musical

Boa2, yes, OTL's typically run quite hot. the three OTL brands i am familiar with (Atmasphere, Tenor and Joule) all run pretty hot.....the big Atmasphere and big Joule's run the hottest in my experience....to the degree that summertime listening in certain parts of the country is avoided if you don't have air conditioning.

atma-sphere's used to have fans in them for cooling. They do run hot but i could name a few non otl amps that ran hot too. With otl amps its more a function of what type of output tube there using and how their biasing the tube. Generally speaking u wont find otl amps using 6550 or 6CA7's as this would be an impedence mismatch. G. Garfield

"the point: there is no best anything. it's a matter of taste."

I completely agree.

Yes, I have owned CJ. Not my cup of tea at all.

I will still take SET any day over OTL.

BTW, I don't like the LAMM Reference preamp. I had it and gave it the boot. Presently have the ARC Ref 3 which is magnificent but then that is my taste. The Lamm ML 2.1 with the Ref 3 is for me as good as it gets.

Boa2

Before I got my M60s, my biggest concern was the dreaded heatwave they were purported to throw off. I live just north of what's left of New Orleans where it's typically in the mid 90s both temperature and humidity wise for 6 months of the year. Well, the bad news is that they are mighty toasty but the good news is that somehow it goes completely unnoticed in my no-so-gigantic listening room, come summer or winter. The thermal load just seems to dissipate without leaving a mark. Makes no sense to me but that's the bottom line. I do listen about 11' away from the amps, though. YMMV

Boa2, in response to your question, amps designed for Class A operation all run hot, whether OTL or not, whether tube or solid state. It's the Class A operation, not the fact that they are OTLs, that results in the heat. The best of the OTL amps (Atma-Sphere, Joule, Tenor) are run in Class A for best sound. For a while, Atma-Sphere made the MA-1 and MA-2 models with an optional switch to change operation from Class A to Class A/B to address the heat issue, but I think Ralph dropped that as a standard feature because most owners never wanted to make the sonic trade-off and left the amps set for Class A anyway.

[D]o the OTL's and their little tube armies run especially hot?