Hi Vtech, I will play about with speaker positioning when I put my system back together following the room being freshly decorated. It will be at that point I will be adding the new all black GT's I have recently purchased. I can not wait!
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"
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.
