Definitely lonely to be an audiophile

OP,

Perhaps, just perhaps your four legged friend likes you just fine, and maybe, just maybe, she thinks your system sounds like, well, dog poop :)

I never thought of the dog aspect. I have a love seat as listening chair with the left seat in the sweet spot for me and the right for one of my dogs. She likes classical and jazz mostly... but will get up, and go to the corner if I put on something loud and screechy. She really enjoys some music, keeping her head up and listening to sounds coming from different locations.

I love traveling. The moment I am at the airport I am off the grid. Although someone could call me they don’t. Then in Japan or China, wherever I am, the moment I have a minute I slip off into anonymity and explore the quiet back streets and parks. Which always to my surprise and delight are completely empty of people. I love snaking my way through interconnected parks and gardens of small towns in China (you know, 18 - 30 million people) and soaking in the culture (through what they have built / native habitat. As a teenager I loved getting lost in the quiet empty urban night in Chicago... and later backpacking alone on the Pacific Crest trail for a couple weeks. I always kind of wanted to sail across the Pacific alone. What does lonely mean?

@ghdprentice

Your career interests me because our arenas seem to have some commonality.  If you'd like to share details, please send me a private message.  If not, I understand perfectly.  I've only exchanged private messages with one member so far!

It used to frustrate me not being able to share my passion of audio with my family. Lonely indeed. However, my dad liked Atlantic City a lot and went there weekly. (He passed in 2015). He blew enough money to get good comps like free concert tickets. I was surprised when he started attending the shows. He took in a Moody Blues show. He talked for weeks about how much he enjoyed it! A cool moment for me for him to share that. Joe

"I want to be alone."  Greta Garbo. 

“The neighbors have a crappy TV streaming the concert, really bad quality,”

One does not know what one does not know. For example, If an individual has only driven a Yugo, would they understand a Tesla?

     Buy your wife a used receiver and speakers or something.  If you can't put something together that is acceptable for television watching with your wife, you should be ashamed.   A shrink might be able to cure you of your OCD enough to allow you to succumb to your psychosis of not being able to accept that there is another problem driving it.  You don't have to continually look for faults in a system, especially to the point that it curtails sharing an experience with a loved one. 
     My Television plays into a Rotel pre-amp tuner I bought of Craigslist for $30, including shipping, using an old Bryston amp.   At first, the pre-amp sounded to terrible that I was going to trash it,  but I needed the remote and tone controls.  It plays through my 41 year old, stand mount B&W two and a half ways, and has burned in very nicely, i.e. My ears and brain have adapted to hear its good qualities over the bad.  My bedroom TV has smaller stand mount B&W's powered by an entry level Audire Legato pushing an Adcom 60 wpc amp ($50, Craigslist), which  was also very disappointing, at first.  I can always go the the good system to really enjoy music, but I am not psychotic about being the necessity of being a tweaky nut case who is so terribly insecure that he cannot fathom listening anything that is less than perfect.Give this to your wife, along with a used receiver, etc, and speakers. 

It is hard to share this hobby with people who think the work and expense you put into the pursuit of excellent sound is foolish, but I do enjoy sharing it with some fellow audiophiles that I know. Mostly though it is a solitary but highly enjoyable time lost in the appreciation of what I am listening to and my introspection.

I live alone, but feel less alone when listening to a well set up system. It took me a while, but I've educated my 75 year old ears to distinguish between good and bad recordings and other factors that bring out the best sound my system can produce. Quality cables, room acoustics and other tweaks are as important as the components  you choose. 

My enjoyment of great home audio and efforts make my system sound great have never been appreciated by others not particularly into this stuff. That's just how it is, and I don't mind it at this point. You can never get guests to "shut up and listen" as they're generally not there to do that...plus, there's one "sweet spot" made just for me...I put on low level instrumental jazz all night when people are over (or at least back in the day when people were over), and maybe later when people loosen up I'll play something groovy and louder if it fits. If somebody asks me about the system they're in trouble as after a few drinks I can get carried away blathering about the wonderfulness of my cables and phono cartridge ("here...feel this tube!"), and have to just stop...meh...if your insecurities demand appreciation of how smart and cool you are by often noting your expensive hobbies and claimed superior taste (like the self promoting bloviating creeps who often dominate this forum), well...you're simply an insecure bonehead. Like me.