When I bought my TV stand years ago, I neglected to get one with ample spacing between shelves for a potential receiver. I have noticed that most receivers are approximately 6-7" tall. The ones I am leaning towards are 6.5". The shelves are 8" apart. This leaves me with roughly 1" for ventilation. Is this enough? Don't know if this makes a difference, but the shelves are composed of glass. Do certain receivers run cooler than others? Looks like I will be getting an HK receiver or possibly a Denon.

I hate to say it, but the best rule of thumb I have found is that you want at least half as much space above the equipment as the front-to-back measurement of the ventilation grill (ie almost a foot for most receivers). Anything less and you do start to restrict the convection.

I imagine anything runs cooler than my HK but just guessing -- it idles hot but at least it doesn't get much hotter when it's working hard.

if you are really worried about it, you can always get an auxillery fan and plug it into the power up plugs in the back of the receiver.. that way, it only blows when the power to the receiver is on, and shuts off when you power down. i have contemplated getting a small fan for my onkyo, but i rarely push high volumes for extended amounts of time. it does get warm, but not excessively so.

bigjohn

I have had 2 separate receivers in the same TV stand. I had to move both of them out and put them on the top shelf of an audio rack due to overheating problems. I'm going to purchase a new rack with plenty of space so this problem never shows itself again.

I had my TiVo above my receiver (which had 4 inches of clearance) and I was having problems with the TiVo overheating. I moved 'em around, (now the reciever has 5 inches and a larger space to breath in, as does the TiVo. I take cooling pretty seriously these days.