Conversion From Music Lover to Devoted Audiophile Proves Costly but Enjoyable : Trends: High-end audio can mean a $20,000 turntable, a $21,000 compact disc system, even $125,000 speakers.

Ira Schacter remembers the day he was converted from music lover to audiophile. Having been invited to audition a $100,000 stereo system, the lawyer sat in the dark for three hours listening to music and decided the system was worth it.

“I could tell within a matter of inches where instruments were in the sound stage,” he said. “It was the most incredible thing.”

Schacter had entered the world of high-end audio--an $800-million-a-year industry catering to aural fetishists. Some audiophiles spend tens of thousands of dollars on a single component hoping to attain sonic bliss.

For a person with the cash and the audio bug, posh stereo salons here can provide a $20,000 turntable, a $13,000 pair of monophonic tube amplifiers, a $21,000 compact disc system or $125,000 speakers.

With four of the best-known and oldest shops in the country, New York is the retailing center of the audiophile universe.

“New York is our single biggest and most active market in the world,” said Dean Roumanis, the vice president and general manager of Krell Industries Inc., one of the largest firms producing expensive electronics. “That’s true of other companies too.”

Despite the recession, business seems to be brisk. The Academy for the Advancement of High End Audio, the industry’s trade group in Santa Rosa, Calif., reported that a survey of its members showed a 20% annual sales growth since 1988. And retailers like Steve Guttenberg, manager of Sound by Singer near New York’s Union Square, said sales are up for ultra-expensive equipment.

Even at noon on a Sunday, when many New Yorkers are still dreaming about brunch, the salesmen at Singer are busy demonstrating gear. It’s easy to sell when your customers are obsessed.

“People get hooked on improving their system until every piece is of the same caliber,” said David Lalin, a salesman at the store. “Then the person is addicted to moving to the next level.”

Elliot Fishkin, owner of Innovative Audio in Brooklyn Heights, was once a compulsive hobbyist. “I wanted to have the object,” he said. “It almost didn’t matter what it sounded like. It was like an addiction.”

The thrill for many comes from achieving “the most amount of musical realism and accuracy,” said Michael M. Gindi, a psychologist and equipment reviewer for The Absolute Sound, an audio specialty magazine. “But when you get overly competitive and fetishistic, the joy is gone.”

In a well-designed, properly arrayed system, the music seems to float magically in the space between the speakers with an almost eerie presence. If a musical performance has been well recorded, the positions of the players on a stage can be discerned easily during playback--basses to the right and behind the violas, the sound of French horns reflected off the rear wall of the concert hall.

Krell builds a $7,000 CD transport and a $14,000 digital-to-analog converter. The transport spins the disc and reads its digital information and the converter changes the transport’s digital output into a standard electronic signal. Roumanis said the Milford, Conn., company builds an average of 40 Excel digital-to-analog converters a month.

But even with substantial wholesale revenues from such expensive items, the 14-year-old company sells only $12 million annually, Roumanis said.

In fact, the money generated by these pricey components--$820 million to $1 billion in annual sales worldwide, said Cara Kallen, the managing director of the Academy for the Advancement of High End Audio--is a drop in the consumer-electronics bucket. This compares with annual worldwide sales of $21 billion for all audio gear, she said.