mac48025
The Pioneer M-22 runs quite hot. I can touch the heatsinks but I can't leave my hands on them for very long.
The amp is 6" tall and I have it in an 8" space on my rack. The rack is open on all four sides so I think the ventilation's is fine with 2" of space above it.
@kdude66
Yes, 30 watts of Class A power seems to be enough. I still have my doubts about 1 watt though! If I put my Freya preamp in JFET mode (tubes bypassed, no gain), I can crank the volume all the way up and it is not painful. It's louder than I would listen to, but not way too loud. The tube gain mode provides 14dB of gain. Vidar has 27dB of gain. I am not sure how much gain the M-22 has. I can't find that spec anywhere and I don't know how to measure it myself.
The more I read about the Pioneer M-22, the more I find that it was considered one of the best amps of it's time and is still considered a phenomenal amp. Based on my experience with it and the DI's, I have to agree. There seems to be a nice synergy there.