component order on a rack?


Alright I want to make sure I am not overlooking what is the obvious to so many others, but is there a "best" order for placing audio separates on a rack. I have five shelves. It is a Michael Greene rack I recently got used. I was planning on putting my turnatble on top, tuner next, cd player, preamp, amplifier. Is this the best? I trying to do things right so any advise would be helpful.
dmeieros
Depends on the distance between your components. I wouldn't place the power amp on the one stand with small signal components because there is a possibility of induction of parasite currents if the power transformers aren't shielded well. It may cause hum. Simply saying power amp should stay away from other components and certainly have much more room for heat dissipation. If your stand has large enough space(so that preamp is above at least by 4" from power amp)it maybe OK.
I agree with Marakanetz but would take it one step further. A "high bias" amp needs a LOT of room to breath. A 4" space above it is not enough and this can create problems. Not only are you trapping heat in and around the amp, you would also be "heating" the shelf above it. This in turn can transfer more heat into the component resting on that shelf, causing drifting or stability problems. This primarily holds true for digital based circuits, but others may also be effected.

Other than that, i'm sure that there is some "logical" way to arrange components in terms of "best performance". I have seen things written about placement of digital tuners ( probably also applies to transports / dac's / players ) due to the RF that they emit. I typically just lay them out for greatest convenience. Then again, most of my gear is spaced further apart on shelves than what most people have. I do not like having components or cables all bunched up. Sean
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The only things I would add are I don't think you'll mind the CD player over the preamp, but I suggest turning it and the tuner off when listening to your turntable to minimize the digital noise, and watch out with the preamp being right over the transformer in the power amp, that could cause you some hum problems in the phono stage, depending on how sensitive it is and how much gain it has (for example, I once had a Vendetta phono stage that I had to move away from the shelf above my JPL line stage because of the transformer in the line stage causing very noticable hum).
Turntable on top, next is the preamp cuz ya fiddle with it quite often (and you don't want to get on all fours to adjust the gain or change input selection), next is the CD player (for the same reasons as the preamp), then tuner, and finally the amp on the bottom shelf.
Your order makes good sense. The only other caveat I would add is that you may require a fairly long phono cable that passes potentially RF-noisy components. When I did this, I cut the noise with a pair of Audioquest RF Noise Stoppers (sold by Audio Advisor and others). They worked well.