Cary 805s or Atma Sphere M60s?

Honest1,
You`re correct, that why I limited my impressions to the Atmasphere(M-60 and MA-1) as I`m not familiar with the Joule or the Tenor OTL sound.

Pubul57 neatly sums it up, it will just come down to individual preferences.

I think most would agree, the Atma-sphere is generally leaner by comparison to the Joule, or the Joule is plumper, depending on your perspective - I guess that Ying/Yang thing - my ears lean towards a preference of the Atma-sphere soundscape, I also expect that impressions and preferences between the two will vary based on the speakers being used with the respective amps.

I picked up an S30 listed here on Audiogon. I chickened out and kept my 805AE instead of selling to fund an expensive pair of Atmasphere monos. I have a small listening room, and my listening is mostly direct energy from my speakers. My listening triangle is a bit less than seven feet in all directions. I have to say that little S30 is phenomenal! Sound stage is very large, airy, detailed, with precision and three dimensional life size presentation; plus the amp is only a model 2 version, that was well taken care of. Russian power tubes, however a mix of vintage 6SN7 drivers....nothing fancy. I am a believer in the OTL amplifier. In comparison to my humble system, I can't imagine what the rest of you folks enjoy with you wonderfully elaborate systems. By the way, you all may cringe at this, but I am completely Anti-cable equipped including XLR interconnects, speaker cables and autoformers. I am impressed. These new cables have satisfactorily replaced my Nordost Red Dawns and Audio Zen interconnects. Comments?

Charles1dad,
Thanks. I'm positive your system is very special. Curious as to how loud you like your listening level?

Pubul57,
I think specs have to be interpretted correctly to get theory to hand off to practice. I see my Maggie specs as, 1: a very flat 4 ohms (flatter the better for tubes and especially SET's). 2: bass is around 5 ohms, mid 4 ohms and treble mid to high 3 ohms. 3: crossover freq has a bump instead of a dip (tubes like that, don't have to dump a lot of current as in a dip situation). 4: They are a line source so they will sound louder than a point source of the same sensitivity.

The catch of course is you can only go to x loudness with x amount of power. It has to fit ones desires. SET's have such vanishing low distortion at low power levels that I really enjoy them on the Maggies at my desired level.

FWIW, I had VSM's back in the 90's. From what I remember of them and what I heard recently when I demoed an S-30, I think that would be a great combo.

Thanks Onemug. I recently read the reviews of the 3.7 which sounded very interesting indeed. The I went to the Mag website and reading the stuff on type of amplifier needed and they almost defined a "good" amplifier as one that doubles down output between 8 ohm and 4 ohm and started thinking this leaves me out, at least with the M60s, and most other tubes amps, sounded like a recipe for SS which I will not do. So perhaps this hope, I know they use to show with ARC for many years so you would think it must works with certain tube amps. You are right of course, for tube amps, smooth impedance is the key, and just enough watts.