[warnsey]

G'day. Somewhere i was reading that it's good to insulate your connectors after you have made termination with a silicon rubber compound. Anyone know if this will have any benefits?

 

[Uncle Erik]

How do you apply the silicon to the connectors? Do you plug them in and then smear it over them?

I'm not sure what the electrical benefit would be for doing that. The wires and plugs are already insulated. Unless you have a lot of electrical storms, keep a Tesla coil around or like to rub the cables with a wool sweater, the insulation will perform just fine.

Don't worry about static electricity. If it's there, it's not going to affect the sound. A bigger worry should be how sunspot cycles change the amount of RF reflected off the ionosphere. Unshielded cables do pick up RF. But that's not that big of a deal, either, unless your ham neighbor is tuning up on 40m and you start hearing his voice in your rig.

Nevertheless, the only use I'd see for the silicon would be to prevent corrosion on the connectors. Unless you live in a damp climate, don't worry about it.

 

[StevieDvd]

It can be a good thing if your cables are built properly.

The stuff I use is for electrical anyway and helps to avoid corrosion and also prevents the joints flexing too much. It was only a few pounds and does seem like translucent bathroom sealer, and yes you do just smear it over.

I started to use it after a bad solder joint in an interconnect led me to think I'd screwed up a dac fix.

Steve