Do "Cardas Caps" make a difference?

Zaikesman, I agree totally with your comments. That having been said, I own a set of them and when I reach behing my amp to change cables, my fingers love their cool reassuring metallic feel. My other favorite thing about them is that they came in a cute lil' plastic bag with a classy looking Cardas shell sticker on it :)

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!!

Is this what Sean is talking about? I have a YBA Integre DT amp in a small system in my home office. If the tuner is on I can hear the radio faintly as I go by an unused input when turning the input selector knob on the amp. If the CD player is also playing I can hear both (or just the CD player if the tuner is off). If I go by a used input where the component is plugged in and is not turned on, it is dead quiet. Therefore, when an RCA cable is plugged into that input, I do not get any sound if that unit is off, which is desireable. So a cap would do nothing, because it just covers the hole, but a shunt goes in the input and will cut-off the noise? A trip to Rat Shack is in order then! Thanks!

I have a dozen and I frankly can't tell if there's an improvement in sound. Oh, well, they look good enough and keep the dust out. I won't buy any more of them though.