Cary 805s or Atma Sphere M60s?

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.

I think of the Joule warmth can be attributed to their very fine, but warm sounding preamp, did the same (added warmth and color) thing when I paired it with the M60s - a signature sound many love, but hey, I like passive preamps, so not the way for me. Hard to say if one will prefer the 805s or the Atma-sphere, different approaches that will appeal to different types of listeners.