Cardas Caps on unused digital jacks?

This is a very subtle tweak, but I beleive they offer an improvement. After covering all the unused jacks in my system with Cardas caps, I listened for several weeks. I then removed them all and noticed that the HF had a bit of an edge and the mids were a bit unfocused. I would recommend covering all the unused jacks, as this is a relatively inexpensive tweak.

As for unused XLRs, the same test yielded similar results, but the cost for Cardas XLR caps is several times the cost of RCA jacks.

Good luck!

Are these better than shorting plugs?

I cover everything with those nifty little dudes. I tape three of them together for my unused balanced ports :)

They were a little tight when installing on some of my gear. When I finally took them out, the tighter ones left surface scratches on the jacks.

So if you have the urge to buy some, make sure you expand the caps to prevent scratching your jacks.

If it's all or mostly about keeping the jacks clean...why not use those soft-plastic thread-protector tips every hardware store sells for about 8¢ apiece?