In late November, I bought myself a pair of used Vandersteen 2Wq subs as early Xmas gifts -- one from my local Vandy dealer, and the other from a very nice seller on A-gon. HUGE improvement to the system, and a great combination with the Vandy 3A Sig's. Richard Vandersteen told me that the 3A Sig's with a pair of 2Wq's gets you about 75-80% of the performance of the Model 5, at less than half the cost. (Boy, do I have some subterranean bass on good organ recordings! I've heard an expression that the lowest octave on the organ is actually the voice of God speaking, and I'm nearly prepared to believe it.)
I figured that the subs would be the only A/V gear I "received" for Christmas, but my wife surprised me with a "Santa Claus" gift -- a Panasonic PV-HS2000 hard disk video recorder with Replay TV. She got a great buy on it thru Ubid.com: MSRP was $600, but with the Ubid price, and the $100 rebate offered on this unit, she paid just over $200. Should be fun to experiment with it, even though she is the inveterate late-night TV watcher and will probably get most of the use from the unit.
We also gave each other some DVD's, including the "Platinum Collection" version of "Snow White & The Seven Dwarves". The Disney organization has done an absolutely stunning job of color restoration on this disk, and the new 5.1 Dolby soundtrack is a wonderful addition. If you have not seen this new version of "Snow White", and are interested in film animation, you MUST add this DVD to your collection. If the great transfer job wasn't enough, the disk also has over 3 hours of material on the creation of "Snow White", including a lengthy narration by Walt Disney himself.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas, and has a very happy New Year.
Scott C-
