Avery Robert Fisher, known as Avery Fisher (March 4, 1906 – February 26, 1994), was an amateur violinist, a pioneer in the field of high fidelity sound reproduction, founder of the Philharmonic Radio Company and Fisher Electronics, and a philanthropist who donated millions of dollars to arts organizations and universities.

Avery Fisher was born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of Charles (Anschel) (1868-1946) and Mary (Miriam) (née Byrach) (1869-1945) Fisher's six children. He came from a Jewish family. His parents had emigrated in 1903 (three years before his birth) from Kyiv, then a part of the Russian Empire.

Fisher said he became fascinated with music through his father's extensive collection of early phonograph cylinder recordings and that everyone in the family had to learn to play a musical instrument. "I was born into a musical family. Every one of my parents' children was given an opportunity to learn an instrument. Papa would go down the line: violin, piano, violin, piano, violin".

He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Science Engineering (B.Sc.Eng.) degree in 1929, and subsequently worked for six years in book publishing and book design. During this time, Fisher, an amateur violinist, began experimenting with audio design and acoustics. He wanted to make a radio that would sound like he was listening to a live orchestra — a radio that would achieve high fidelity reproduction of the original sound.

Fisher explained his desire to leave publishing and move into audio design, saying, "That's how I started to make a living when I got out of college. I worked with a publishing house, Dodd, Mead and Company – to whom I owe everything when you get right down to it. I worked at Dodd, Mead & Co. for the single most cruel person I have ever met in my lifetime – and I'm not exaggerating. This man was only a year older than I. He was the boss's son, and I think he sensed my apprehension about having a job at all. I went to work there in 1933, having been in the advertising agency that handled their account before that. That agency closed when the banks closed in 1933, and I was out of work for about six months. In the fall of that year, I went to Dodd, Mead asking if they could use my services, and they hired me for $18 a week. After about six months, perhaps out of guilt or something, they gave me a two-dollar raise. I was doing the same work there that I was doing for them at the agency, and the agency used to charge them $100 to design a [promotional] brochure. I used to turn out two or three of those a week, and I still was getting only $18 or $20."

Fisher continued, "In 1937, I noticed that the advertising department of Dodd, Mead was buying their photo-engravings from one source, and their book manufacturing department was buying from another. If they combined both those purchases and bought from one source, their quantity discount would save them just under $10,000 a year. I went to my superior, Ed Dodd, and told him about it. He said, "That's a great idea, Fisher." He never called me by my first name – always by my last, you know, like a deckhand. He said, "I think I'll do something about it." And they did. And I said, "By the way, I'd be very grateful if I could have a five-dollar raise." He could have said, "Well, not right now." But instead, he said, "Well, no. We probably could get some young Yale boy in here to do your work for less than we're paying you." That day, I said to myself, "I've got to get out of here one way or another," and I started putting [radio-phonograph] sets together for friends. I was moonlighting, and I did that for a number of years before I was in a position to get out and really spend full time on this. By 1943, I'd built up my company, Philharmonic Radio, to the point where I could draw enough money from it to earn a living. By that time, I had a wife and child. So I owe them [Dodd, Mead] everything. Because I really loved my work as a book designer, and I turned out some very fine stuff, which won prizes. One of the books I turned out was called Grassroots Jungle, which became one of the 50 best books of the year for graphic design — this is out of 40,000 titles — and Ed Dodd never let me put my name in a book for credit as the designer. Now, this is a long answer to your simple question: what got me into hi-fi? It was an act of desperation — and also of love because I really enjoyed hearing good equipment."

Fisher explained the start of his career in high-fidelity audio, saying, "...I was developing my hobby in hi-fi, and a number of friends asked me to make for them the kind of equipment I was constructing for my own home, the sort of thing that was not commercially available, the type of thing found in radio stations or movie theaters. And so I started constructing for this small group of people, and before I knew it, I had the beginnings of a business."

In 1937 Fisher established his first company, the Philharmonic Radio Company with Victor Brociner, producing the company's first high-fidelity radio receivers. Philharmonic Radio equipment was well regarded, earning Fisher the beginning of his reputation as a leader in audio equipment.