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See it, hear it. That is the essence of an engineering project underway at the University of Applied Sciences in Fribourg, Switzerland—one that needs the assistance of a highly qualified PhD student.

Michael Fremer wraps his ears around the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/449/">Westlake Audio Lc5.75F loudspeaker</A> in an effort to figure out "what's a pro audio company doing at CES?" Fremer discovers why a brand that, until recently, was rarely heard outside of recording studios is now selling 70% of its products to consumers.

Can you hear long passages of music in your mind? If so, your brain may be wired for sound like those of professional musicians.

They don't turn over quite as fast as computer equipment, but mass-market audio component product cycles typically last about a year, until the next Consumer Electronics Show comes around. High-end audio products, however, enjoy much longer life spans&mdash;sometimes stretching to several years.

Every once in a while, some mainstream journalist discovers the audiophile underground.

This episode of "Fine Tunes" is mainly about the care and feeding of speaker drivers. Before I launch into some of the tweaks—a few fairly wild and wacky—sent in by readers, here are two from my own experience.

"The long tradition of professional connoisseurship has resulted in the development of a bewildering universe of specialist terminology. In certain cases, it must be admitted, there was self-indulgent proliferation of words relating to some minute feature....In fact, no clear distinction can be made between one term and its closest neighbor in meaning."&mdash;from the Introduction to Kanzan Sato's <I>The Japanese Sword, A Comprehensive Guide</I>, translated and with an introduction by Joe Earle (New York: Kodansha America, Inc., 1983)