Do "Cardas Caps" make a difference?

I had a slight buzz in my system. The Cardas caps helped lower the buzz volume by around 40%, so they did help. I resolved the buzz problem, but am happy to know the Cardas Caps do help in some circumstances. It's nice to know my expensive gear wont be gathering any dusty gook around the rca inputs anyway.

the cardas caps are well-made, cool looking and certainly do make a difference to george cardas' bottom line. BTW, an xlr/balanced version is now available to keep dust balls and other nasties from enterin' those three little holes. -cfb

Shunts don't necessarily have to be direct shorts. You can solder a resistor across a low grade RCA and achieve a "resistive shunt". This effectively "closes" that input without any adverse affects since it is not loading down the preamp circuitry. One would want to use the lowest resistance possible, but going as high as one or two hundred ohms should be fine for most any preamp / switchbox. After all, some sources have very low output impedances and hooking them up to the inputs typically does nothing "negative" to the system in itself.

For the record, shunts should lower your noise floor and could reduce / get rid of crosstalk between various inputs and sources. Try checking out these two threads that had similar subjects and info. Sean
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http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&995748373&read&keyw&zzshunt

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?fcabl&1002915440&openfrom&4&4#4

Thanks for all your input!!