My grandmothers both had early Maytag Halo-of-Heat dryers (DG701 and DE500). They WERE eerily quiet. Those dryers were SO overbuilt. The sad thing was, IMHO, the later 06-series dryers were not big enough to properly hold a max size load from the 06-series deep tub washers.
As far as modern dryers go, I have a Maytag "stream-of-heat", the top part of my SE1000 stack. It does a fine job of drying on its default dryness level. It's a bit on the wee side, but the service manual says the drum volume is the same as the HoH dryers, so its a fine match for the standard tub washer.
I've really admired the WP/KM dryers I've had for their massive capacity and speedy drying, but as others have said, they don't do well on small loads. Perhaps Maytag was on to something back when they put the sensors on the drum baffles. I've also never cared for top-mount lint filters. They just guarantee a nice lint-dust coating on the top of the dryer, washer, and anything else nearby. I also don't care for filters that don't come out of the machine (or don't easily come out).
As a child, we had a 1973 Speed Queen dryer that seemed to have the ideal lint filter. It was a large round screen (18"?) that slid out of a holder in the door--no stooping, and you could carry it to a trashcan and clean it there. Come to think of it, that really was an ideal dryer--stainless steel drum and and the gas valve was under a lid in the top of the machine--very easy to relight the pilot. I remember it was quite a chore to relight the pilot on the HoH gas dryers, since the pilot light itself was far to the left of the access panel. I remember dad fashioned a "roach clip" type thing to hold the match (that's all it was used for...). In retrospect, maybe if we had made sure the flapper on our exhaust hood was operating correctly, the pilot light would have stayed lit. Ah well.
T.
