Can OTL's drive ribbons well?

It seems I just discussed this with Albertporter. I recommended that he consider the atmaspheres for his ribbons or for the ultimate in speed consider solid sate. I made the speed decision based on my audition of the Martin Logan Statement latest version dirven by Spectral electronics. Albert presented proof that his vtls were plenty fast. He is currently running Air tights on top.
If a picture is worth a thousand words a listen is worth an endless discusion. Get thee to a dealer and have a listen to the Bryston 7b with the magneplanr 3.6 or 20.

A very interesting thread as I will soon have an opportunity to listen to the Atmasphere amps with Electrostatics (SoundLab) and hopefully my Magnepan 3.5s if the dealer will allow me to lug them to his shop.

As for the suggestion to stick with ss for ribbons because of the lack of "speed" with transformer'd tube amps, I just have to disagree here. I did indeed hear the Magnepans at my dealer (Minneapolis) on both Bryston and ARC amps. It was absolutely yawn city with the Brystons. I just don't get it with all the praise from people using these amps with Magnepans. Without the "you are there" feeling, who cares about speed!

The Maggies bring on an incredible emotion to the music when driven by a number of tube amps that simply is not there with the Brystons. The hybrid (tube input / ss output) Counterpoint NPS400 far exceeds the Brystons in a most natural tonal balance and resolution. But the Wolcotts bring on a whole new level of natural decay of notes and 3-dimensionality beyond the Counterpoint.

I have no idea the quantity of "speed" of the Wolcotts. Until I hear an ss amp that can do what the Wolcotts can do, I will stay with what I have. And from what I have read from Rushton's many responses here, I can only imagine that the Atmasphere's would be another huge leap in this direction.

John

"fast organic liquidity with dynamics at around $4000 and hopefully much less(new or used)-- again specifically driving ribbon mids and highs?"
I don't know what associated equipment you were using with the bryston maggies or what your musical tastes are. I was listening to the Mark Levinson CD 39, 38 preamp bryston 7b and the ribbon tweeter maggies. The CD was Branford Marcellus duet with his father. So good that the salesman went out and bought the cd.
I think the 7b's were about $4k.
If you want to go all out like the $10k-27k atma spheres'. We can have a shoot out tube vs solid state.
If you pay attention, I have nothing but praise for the atma spheres. Wouldn't mind owning them myself. Those tubes must produce a beautiful glow at night. I just think transistors offer more speed than tubes. If you don't mind the softened transients of tubes please be my guess.

Berning did a presentation several years back to fellow Physicists at a convention, where he proved that tubes measured faster than SS devices, so much so that the SS measuring device that was used, showed the tubes was faster than the measuring device was supposedly possible to measure!

None of us listens to a tube or a transistor alone; It's the implementation, i.e. the amps, we listen to.
One good thing about tubes is that a circuit can be stabilised w/out feedback thus eliminating extra "length" in the signal path. Another is that, given the lowish output in these circuits, one can build a tremendous driving "engine" (i.e. trannies & rectification and energy storage) to accommodate those few watts.
As Eldart pointed out, tubes can easily go into the MGh region just as transistors -- they just have high output impedance to drive devices like spkrs directly (unless you parallel them & then some, see OTLs).
Likewise, a transistor amp, designed to cover a wide bandwidth should do well -- as long as it doesn't have severe phase problems (i.e., the time window for a 0,5MGh signal is much smaller -- i.e. you have to rise & fall faster in time -- than, say, a 500Hz one).
BTW, if I'm not mistaken, Mr Berning doesn't use output trannies in his basic designs...