Very good amp, for the money no doubt an excellent value.. I have had, Threshold, forte, sunfire, mccormack, ps audio, Rougue tube mono's, Cary tube, Classe, a few others, including the newest Denon type surround receivers, and Onkyo, by far these are the most versitile for my use and type of music, basically they are incredibly built and extremly simple design, all high quality parts, really not to many corners cut, they stay completly cold to the touch in general, but MUST be on the floor(wood) or an amp stand to be at room temprature, but will stay there even driving hard bass for hours, If you put the khartago in a cabinet it will get fairly warm, but not as bad as the above amps I have owned, even the Forte, threshold, Ps audio, all the tubes will get Hot like a Class A' type amp on the floor, but the khartago's never break a sweat.
Down to the sound, well it is the best in dynamic punch, with very smooth sonic signature(some will call it Dark) but I use very high efficiency speakers so it never has a problem with that, but for the first month it will sound Pretty DRY, and the bass will not be what it should right away either, but once those caps get a solid kick for a few sessions it will open up, I would literally use some very intense type Rock music or something to drive them pretty hard and they will start to transform, These amps do not like you to take it easy on them at all, For example my Wadia puts 4 volts out, vs. the standard CD players running 2 volts, and my Mcintosh preamp runs up to about 8 volts out, which is more than my last preamp that threw about 4 volts at them, and they eat it up!! no way can you overdrive the inputs of these amps, I have had crazy levels running, With 30 hz Bass boosted on the mcintosh controller and nothing came close to breaking lose, I account this to the fact they are Extremly high Current amplifiers, so absolute control is key factor with them, and by the way running bass boosted like that into any amp makes them work Double hard and these have no Hickups doing it, so for the money I stay with Odyssey for now and put the extra few grand you could have into amps into the CD first and foremost, Speakers and Preamp a close second.