To warm up or not to warm up, and...?

Why do people continue to ask questions that only they can answer? Try listening to your system and make a determination for  yourself. You expect strangers to know what you hear? Some may be based upon logic or myth. When it comes to audio and synergies the variables can be endless and no two identical systems will ever sound the same in different environments. All you will be receiving is others opinions which are worth what you paid for them. Trust your own ears.

The only components that suffer from the heat are electrolytic caps (they dry-out). As for the performance - hot electrolytic caps have higher ESR, hot bipolar transistors are faster while hot FET transistors are slower. It is hard to make any sense of it, but warming gear up and keeping it warm lowers temp. gradients (always good). Lowering temp. from hot to warm with forced air is OK, IMHO.  It will extend life of electrolytic caps.  Their life will double for each 10degC temp drop.  Slow uniform air flow should be the best (any forced air speed is better than convection cooling).

tom6897,

Oh I do trust my golden ears, you have no idea. As I stated in a reply, there is no hum or hiss or anything else in the form of noise. There is amazing, beautiful musical sound that I very much enjoy, my question was rather simple, would a system perform better warmer or cooler based on the readers experiences, or at a certain temperature, period. I know what I hear, I'm simply asking what do YOU hear differently, if anything when a component is warmer or cooler? Don't get it twisted. 

In my mind, equipment doesn't need to warm up so much as reach stability.  Worst case is you make this take a little longer, while trading longer equipment life.

As others have said, heat is the enemy of a lot of components, especially capacitors.

If you are using a component in any sort of enclosure, I would recommend lots of cooling, as well as making sure that you don't just recirculate hot air inside it.

If your gear lives in an open rack, the most I'd suggest is maybe adding tall feet to elevate the component to ensure it gets fed plenty of cool air.

In my experience most receivers don't get hot to the point of needing cooling but if you have it in a very enclosed environment yes cooling might be needed. If you would've listed your receiver model (big fat really doesn't provide much info) and maybe how is it positioned and installed we could provide some more data. Assuming a regular home environment I would say cooling is not needed and the receiver would be best without it.
The only piece of equipment ever I had need to cool is a 6C33C-B amp basically to extend the caps life.