I'll try to answer some of the questions.
The 6AS7G tubes n the atma-spheres last longer than 3000 hours I believe, especially in the latest designs which are supposed to be very easy on the output tubes. They are more in the neighborhood of $15-17 each to replace however these days.
Shadorn, yes very good eyes. Those are Genelecs 8020s that are paired with a Genelec woofer. I bought them for use with a second edit system, but now use them for Home theater in a temporary setup. They'll go into my main edit sytem someday.
The main speakers are Cerious Technologies Too/bass.
I just learned that these speakers are in fact in production,
and are pretty amazing, especially for the price.
The tweeter is Vifa Ring Radiator, but modified with a ceramic
coating at certain points internally.
You can see my virtual system here.
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vevol&1&ctgAnd as someone mentioned the Atma's not at all the typical tube sound.
I have owned Atma's for many years, and at times (when tubes blew out or I got heavily into home theater) I would go back to solid state. Then any time I would get new speakers, I had to see what they sounded lie with tubes, so I would get the ATma's running again, and undoubtedly they would sound better than whatever SS I was using at the time.
So when it came time to upgrade to new amps, I really didn't even audition anything else. I just got the latest version of what I had all along, MA-1's.
Maybe I'm just suspectible to marketing hype, but the combination of triodes, Output transformerless, and balanced just made think, "how am I get any better than this" except for possibly alot more money. Maybe I shoudl have auditioned VAC's. I heard LAMMs at the NY hifi show but I think they are more expensive and not ol school point to point wiring like the Atma's. You can see a picture I took under hood of the wiring in my virtual system.
