I have a 1 year old and a 3 year old, and my listening area is my living room. I hear you...

I laughed out loud at the silverstones joke CV. I think that was one of your best yet

By "empirical," I was refering to the placement of your ears relative to the source.

Don't make me relive that research.

Ain't sayin' much.

Wouldn't ask that of anyone. Just checking that you did your aural homework. It's all good.

Silverstones and a leather satchel?

I think my first guitar amp was a Silverstones.

Without trying to derail the derailment too much...

Regarding the fan, I initially placed the 120mm fan directly on top of the AVR and noticed that it seemed to be only cooling the area in close proximity to the fan so I found several small rubber self adhering bumpers used on kitchen cabinets & drawers and affixed a bumper on each corner of the fan's housing which raised the housing about an 1/8" or so off of the top of the AVR, this made a huge difference with cooling because now the single fan is cooling the entire AVR as well as acting like rubber isolators keeping the noise down. Depending on the size of the cooling vents on your amp or AVR this may or may not work for some but it's certainly worth a try.

I stopped off on the way home from work today and picked up a couple of 80mm fans for each side of the Rotel 2 channel amp, got 'em all connected up (rubber feet and all) and am sacrificing this afternoon with some rather loud listening levels (wife is out for the afternoon!) on the 80s to see if they will keep the tamps better.

I need to get one of those IR temperature meters that Rick is using, it sounds like fun.

Oh yea, and beer ... can't do scientific studies without a few brews on hand. The sacrifices we take in life.