I love the VAC preamp.  Horn speakers are really cool.  

Did you remove your flatscreen TV from the wall?  Maybe you didn't notice.

What is that center speaker in the very middle? Do you even need a center speaker I tend not to use mine a lot, especially if you have a really good main speakers.

You seem incredibly committed to go out of your way to get equipment.  

There was one observation I forgot to make in my last post to you that I think would, possibly, give you some piece of mind. I cannot speak for all OTLs in general but the Atma amps are designed specifically to address the concerns you have been made aware of regarding the potential harm that could come to a speaker if an amp failure should occur. I don't know if this common practice still but at audio shows, Ralph used to demo his amps by pulling output tubes out of them one after the other while playing music and would even induce a dead short in them (by jumping the + and - speaker terminals) in order to show how composed and unperturbed they were in extreme conditions. No drama, no fireworks, no blown speakers. I think you can rest easy on this count. And in my 25 years of ownership, the worst thing I have experienced is an arcing tube. Never lost a grid resistor, even.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. It is very interesting to hear from someone who has a similar system and exchange experiences.

I cant believe I have the Duo GT's in my possession. I started looking on "HiFi Shark" to see what was on the used market with Duo's. I was particularly interested at the time in the cost of the XD's as these were my dream option due to financial constraints... they were coming in around £18-22K.

Whilst looking on a daily basis I had noticed a pair of Duo GT's " Black horns" Piano gloss cabinets and the copper band upgrades which are a current top spec model coming in at a RRP £52,800.00!!!

The Guy was asking £25K which seemed very cheap for a pair of 20 month old speakers with that new purchase price.

Following several weeks of casual communications with the owner in the south of France he agreed to sell them to me for £18,000. 

I was now in a situation I was not expecting and was not really in the financial situation to move on comfortably and so soon. I was also concerned this was a scam!

In the end a friend and I took a 4 day trip over a thousand miles and returned to the U.K. with my new prized possession. I even bought a pair of Nordost Valhalla 0.3m jumpers and 1m pair of Valhalla speaker cables from the guy for £900.00, I believe that was another bargain too.

Now all I had to do was work how I can pay off the mortgage I took out to buy them 🤣 No joking!

Did you Listen to the story of Jay from audio lab talking about the 1st time he bought a pair of speakers that cleared all his life savings out! Hilarious.

I can see why you when for the Drive 1 up-grade as this makes real financial sense when you have such a great transport to work with. For the time being I will leave my CD option for another day as I have been very happy with my introduction into steaming provided by the MP6 + holo audio Cyan 2. This is not my end game... if funds would allow I would move on a May KTE dac with a HiFi rose RS130 streamer, both can be picked up for about 60% of new price. I am also interested in a dCS Rossini for a one box option but this is silly money even on the used market at around 50% new RRP.

I think I will be holding on to my M60's a little while longer, I know I will probably not better them sonically but the valves are a worry, I can not tell if a tube blows unless I am staring at it at the time, it is difficult to work out if others have gone as they still glow, and am very worried about them damaging the new speakers as my engineer has raised concerns over. Perhaps I need to find better Valves as you say. 

I will have to wait quite a while if I am to purchase the AGD Audions as I want a used pair  in black with the copper rings as seen on Jay Iagi's recent Y/T review. Also I follow Steve Huff who raves over the AGD amps.

Lets see what next year brings!

By the way the other guy with the similar gear on here goes by the name of "Rocketiii" 

 regards, Darren

Man, I'd sure like to have a listen to those new GTs you've got coming. What color horns did you go with? Are you trading/keeping/selling the originals? And are you getting Duo or Uno GTs?

As regards the transport upgrade, first let me clarify the error in my first post where I stated that Enco is in Novi, Mi. They are, in fact, located in Oak Park, Mi. A different Enco is, in fact, in Novi. Weird coincidence, I guess.

The upgrade is rather pricey at $1500 euros (at the time of my purchase) but the experience has been good both with the distributor and Dr. Volpe himself. He actually called me from Germany to get feedback from me after I had the unit in use for a couple of months and I felt he was genuinely interested in what I had to say. I wouldn't say the swap job is a suitable undertaking for a complete novice but my tech said it was a piece of cake for him and the assembly was a true drop in replacement. All the possible replacement transports I was looking at were $7500 and up so, having had no failures in 22 years of ownership (including the original drive unit I replaced), I decide to gamble and, thereby, save a pile of coin.

Regarding the Atmas, I bought my M60s, my MP-1 preamp and Duos all within about a year of one another some 25 years ago. Other than the occasional tube, I have had no failures to deal with. The sound is clean, fast, transparent and, most of all, humanly musical. I have never been compelled to look elsewhere. However, I have no quarrel with Gan Fet class D and I know that Ralph Karsten himself has shelved his M60s for his own GanFet amp to be employed driving his Classic Audio Reproduction speakers, claiming that the SS amp is slightly more transparent with a better 3D illumination of the back of the soundstage. But I remain a skeptic. There is something just more right and natural sounding coming from a vacuum tube than any transistor amp of any persuasion in my experience. Find a good source for tubes (which, apparently, you have had trouble doing) and you should be good to go for the long haul. I've had really good luck with 6AS7 pulls purchased on ebay from Russian sellers in lots from 30-100 tubes at a time. My driver and small signal tubes all come from Andy at Vintage Tube Services. He's the real deal. My experience with Chinese tubes of any variety has been universally unsatisfactory. I would avoid.

Is it possible that the fellow in the UK who went to Audions from the S30 Is the guy who modified the Duos to eliminate the three post framework for his (beautiful) custom horn mounts? If not, a chap that, I believe, posts on Audio Asylum and Whats Best Forum under the moniker "now hear this" and has used the Atma class D's on his Duos (he has two pairs of different vintages) would be someone whose opinion on the matter I would value. Anyway, FWIW, I would consider the move to Gan Fets a sideways move with some possible subtle gains in clarity but with a loss of the natural rightness of the vacuum tube signature.

I hope all this helps some. By all means, let us hear about your time with the GTs once things have settled in.

thanks for the advice on the Drive 1 upgrade. I too purchased the transport around 2003/4. It had been working fine up until a couple of years ago when it  stopped locating the tracks. I sent it away to have some upgrades (£800.00) but it never really sorted out the problem. It was at that time I entered the world of streaming and haven't bothered with CD's since. How much is the up grade you had done to your drive1 and can the mechanism be swapped over easily, or is it a job for an engineer? 

I am thinking of dropping my M60's out of the system as I am feed up with the tubes, I bought a new compliment recently but they are not good. I have been running them with 50% as 30Wts is more than enough for the Duos. My amp engineer has warned me that the OTL side of things comes with a big risk to the speaker drivers if there is a problem...much more than that of amps with transformers!!!

With that said and the recent purchase of the new Duo GT's (as seen attached) I am thinking of getting away from Valve mono blocks. I am seeing some very interesting vids on youtube about the AGD Audions! There is a guy on here (who is also in the U.K.) that has Duo's and has dropped his Atma-S30 out of his system in favour of the Audions, he is over the moon with the change.

What do you think? Darren