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

In the race to get satellite radio to market, <A HREF="http://www.xmradio.com">XM Satellite Radio</A> was the first to <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11148/">hit the air</A> this past September. But competitor <A HREF="http://www.siriusradio.com">Sirius</A&gt; says they were saving the best for last, and has now announced that its official launch date will be as early next year as February 14, with initial broadcasts reaching Denver, Phoenix, and Houston.

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.

<I>What's a pro audio company doing at CES?</I>

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.

Reader Chuck Jones wonders to what extent financial means affect readers' audio equipment purchases.

Thanks to an agreement reached in October, musicians, rather than their record labels, will receive royalty payments for the use of recordings distributed over the Internet or broadcast over cable and satellite systems. Royalty collection agency <A HREF="http://www.soundexchange.com">SoundExchange</A&gt; will distribute payments directly to performers, regardless of their contracts with the record companies, according to a statement issued the second week of November.