“Andrew Singer, New York City audio retailing legend, passed away this past Sunday April 21st at age 73, succumbing to pancreatic cancer after a prolonged battle that for a while he seemed to be winning.”
My audiophile journey began in New York City in the 1990s. That is because at that time, I had finished graduate school, had a job, and finally had the money to buy components that sounded “good” to me. The most famous high-end audio store in NYC at the time was Sound by Singer. It was off of Union Square in lower Manhattan.
Sound by Singer had one room for sources that enabled a customer to change the connections by him/herself and select from ~10 different sources, listen, and compare. I thought this was fruitless exercise because, obviously, “all CD players sound the same.” How wrong I was. To my great surprise, I could hear big differences between the players and after an hour of listening to different tracks on Syncronicity, the dealer came back in and I said, paraphrasing, “I like this one the best, this one second, and this one third,” and he said, paraphrasing, “Exactly right.” (I am still naive enough to believe he was truthful with me!).
From that moment I began dedicating the majority of my spend to the source, which resulted in, first, an Arcam CD player, and then shortly thereafter, the dCS Puccini, which began my 15+ year relationship with dCS.
I will always remember with fondness going into this high-end store off of Union Square, NYC, long since closed, marveling at and admiring the products that at the time I could only hear and enjoy, but not yet afford. I am sure every audiophile has a similar story…
R
