Anyone in this hobby lonely like me and wish they could “hang” with a fellow audiophile?

I'm in Bethlehem, Pa. Anyone wanting to listen are welcome to reach out. I do have audiophile friends. One lives in Orlando. The other is not too far. Another is in ill health. It is more fun sharing AND discovering new music. Thanks OP for the post. Joe

To the OP, I think you should relish peace, stability and living a carefully measured life.  Audio as a hobby, like many other hobbies, can be solitary.  If you want interaction, join a running club, cycling club, take a music class at your local Community College, a bowling league, or if you have a descent car with good brakes, and that handles relatively well, join the SCCA/BMW Club; they hold both track days and autocrosses.  An autocross will get your heart pumping like no kther as you try to hustle your sled around a tight & twisty course to the best time you can achieve.  The BMW CCA has a class where non-BMs run.  Plus, it'll make you a better driver.  Anyways, enjoy your solitude man.  

Best way to make audiophile friends, is make some of your friends into audiophiles.  Give them the disease!  I've given it to a few friends.  Now we listen to the same 5 songs on repeat and discuss how much saliva was on the lips of the singers we encounter.  Kidding but yea like most things, a good time is an even better time when it's shared with someone else.  I get it OP.  Took me a while to find anyone interested in audio gear.  I agree with some of these folks - get yourself to a local audio shop or hifi show.  You will find yourself a good listener.  And it's definitely worth it to have someone else go "wow did you hear that?!" - if I was in East Florida I'd come hang with you.  Just gotta find yourself a local audio freak it sounds like 😄

@whart great post. Thank you.

I’m lucky to live in an area with a very active audio club, despite the small-town atmosphere and laid-back lifestyle (California Central Coast). I think there must be about 50 regular members of our club, several of them very well-heeled with world class systems (and listening rooms), many others with deep DIY and engineering knowledge and experience. One of my best friends used to own the premiere audio store in the area and wrote regular reviews for Stereophile. I met another friend when I bought some equipment from him; he’s not even a club member, but has a great rig.

And yet, I basically never get together with any of these folks for the purpose of listening to our systems. One of them did recently want to hear a recording he’d made in the late ‘90s that he was remastering; his system is far better than mine, but he wanted to hear his music on friends’ systems in order to better understand what needed to be tweaked. Obviously, that was an exceptional circumstance, and even then, I don’t think we spent more than about 30 minutes really listening to the music.

Contrary to what you’d expect, even club meetings are not primarily about listening to the system or to the music, IMO. But maybe this isn’t so surprising after all. Club meetings are really like parties, with lots of people milling about, drinks in their hands, and talking. You can’t talk and listen critically to music at the same time.

On yet another hand, however—about 20 years ago, I had a best friend here who I regularly got together with to get high and listen to music. He hosted a couple of radio shows on the local NPR station, and was the most encyclopedically knowledgeable person about all types of music that I’ve ever known. Knowledgeable, and “talented” in an intuitive way; we’d be listening to, say, something from Schubert and I’d blurt out: “Wait; that sounds like something familiar….” And he’d immediately pick up the vibe and respond by naming what it was I’d recognized: “Yeah, that’s ‘A Day in the Life’ by the Beatles.” His recall for melodies and his ability to see musical affiliations was awesome. But note: our conversations were about music, not equipment. His listening space was a crappy apartment, and he regarded the kit as a fungible tool.

It's natural to want to share ones loves and enthusiasms with like-minded friends; most pleasures are enhanced by being shared. And yet, listening to music is a very solitary thing (it happens inside one’s head) and requires long stretches of non-interaction with others (as I wrote above, you can’t talk and listen critically to music at the same time). Now, making music is a very different matter! Making music together is a wonderfully social activity.