otl

For many years I have been aware of the OTL (Output-TransformerLess) vacuum tube amplifiers designed by of Ralph Karsten of Atmasphere, a small St. Paul, Minnesota company. Ralph's contributions to discussions here at ASR under the handle "atmasphere" have been intelligent, courteous and...

Is there any risk in running a signal through an OTL tubed headphone amp (DarkVoice 336se) with no headphones? I know it’s normally not a good idea, because it could damage the transformer. But there’s not one here. I’d like to do some quick comparisons between the headphone amp on my DAC and...