The answer is yes--they do affect the sound. They act like a capacitor and absorb eneregy and then release it. In principle it can affect (reduce) the peaks caused by room modes. However, in practice, it is so inefficient unless you had a very large woofer and it was designed to have the least resistance at your peak frequencies, that it doesn't make sense.
Yes, I read the thread that you mention about the phone receiver speaker. That to me was something like--could an ant be crawling on one of my cables? Things sound different.