The MU290 is the only amp of its type we have ever offered. So I am still not clear on what you refer to. Maybe you are thinking of the 290, it does sorta look like some car amps, mostly because it is all heatsink. We prefer not to have fans it at all possible. There is no fan on the MU290.
As QQQ pointed out, the amp is not designed for rack mounting. It is designed to be mounted closer to the speaker. There are plenty of rack mount amplifier available. We wanted something easily mounted closer to the load it will drive, and something that can be easily daisy-chained. The MU290 has RJ45 inputs and outputs, and can be easily daisy chained together so you can have one zone with lots of different amp running it. And the amps can be located close to the load they are driving. That's better in terms of sonics and efficiency. Of course if you don't like that (or you're into wire) you can rack mount your amps and pull long runs of speaker wire. It's nice to have alternatives. It is similar in concept to the Bryston mentioned. As I recall that was an outgrowth of their bi and tri-amping work with PMC. They wanted to get the amp close to the speaker. I'm a big Bryston fan. I chose them as our OEM partner when I was at Lexicon. Well built, sounds great, and backed by a good company.
