What makes you think that?
I was under the impression, that especially analog gear can become pretty hot and it’s quite normal. Some analog synths even have a fan inside.
And most analog synths’ manual politely ask for you to leave some time for the oscillators to warm up. The whole circuit warms up and it’s pretty normal, can only imagine the AH drives even more current in its analog circuits than the AR and A4.
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Analog gear that involves amps and/or transformers that can drive signals into pleasing saturation or distortion generates heat. It’s just physics and no way around it. My Heat can get pretty warm, but not what I’d call ‘hot’ or untouchable (at least not how I use it). My other outboard analog gear generates heat as well.
Some manufactures will even tell you to leave at least 1U of space in between units so they can dissipate and breath otherwise the excessive heat will shorten the lifespan of components.
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I’ve not had any experience with the AH, but when I have my analog synths and modular on, it warms my room up significantly. My OB6 module is lovely, it’s like sitting around little campfire. There’s been times where ive had to turn my modular cases off due to the heat becoming fairly extreme, i was worried it was gonna catcn fire or something haha/ Obviously after moving some modules around and leaving some ventilation, it never gets worryingly hot. I remember that my ARmkii used to run really warm too.
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I don’t use any heater in my studio during winter and I live in Quebec, Canada.
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It’s -20 here, just turning on the AH and my tube based reel to reel warm things up nicely!
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Discrete Class A (/AB/etc) amping gear is a tried and true design (and sounds best to a lot of us hardware cats) but is ineffective from an energy conversion standpoint, so a lot of the energy has to dissipate as heat. These kinds of units are designed to dissipate that heat safely and you might even learn to recognize it as a mark of good audio gear! The AH has like 8 discrete stereo circuits, so I’d expect at least some of them to generate heat.
If you think a box like the AH gets hot, try an OTL Tube headamp. You’ll sustain burns on half the unit’s surface!
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