I listened to these mouse pad a few time over the last week or two and then last night asked my son to join me to get a second opinion. He heard the same things I did, so I am not crazy (at least about this anyhow.
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The mouse pad had a definite softening effect when placed under the DAC. Not huge but definitely noticeable. Gave it a kind of classic tube sound, not unlike the older Conrad-johnson gear. It took the edge off a bit, and I really wanted to like it, but I kept going back to the fact that it also took a layer of detail with it. Now keep in mind that I am using an ART DI/O with the Bolder Cable Mensa Mod. The Bolder Mod itself took a lot of the edge out of the DI/O so there really wasn't much there to start. My son has a stock DI/O so we thought it would be a good idea to try it under there to see if we got similar results. My gut feel was that in the case of the stock unit it might very well end up being a net positive change as there is more edge to tame in the first place so the downside of detail loss might easily be outweighed by the reduction in edge.
Well I'll be dammed if the pad didn't have the exact opposite effect under Bobby's DI/O. Instead of softening the sound it brought out the details and to a much greater extent that the softening it did on the Mensa Mod unit. And while the resolution was much better, there was no additional hardening or edginess to the sound. While the mat under the Mensa was kind of a toss up (although I liked it better without, it was close either way) In the case of the stock unit it was unquestionably better with the pad. I am going to have a hard time getting it away from him to pass it along on the tour.
Now just to fill in the other details there is also a big difference in what the two units were originally sitting on. My Mensa is sitting on a ¾ MDF shelf in a cabinet that also holds about 800 records, so there is a lot of ballast. Bobby on the other hand has his components stacked on one another due to space considerations. So his stock DI/O is sitting on the thin sheet metal top of another component. I am sure this has some effect on the results.
As we have said before it may all be about tuning and depend on a) what sound you are starting with in your untreated unit and b)what kind of sound you would like in the end . Whatever underpinning any one person picks as the best for them would be the one that gets them most efficiently from A to B. And at least from my limited experience it seems that there sometimes is no apparent trend and the only way you can know what effect a given treatment will have in your system is to give it a try. Luckily in this case you would be spending under 20, so even if it didn’t work you wouldn’t be out a whole lot of money (and you would have some new mouse pads for you computer.)
Next experiment will be to try some of the other mouse pads I have around the house (most of them are made of neoprene) and see how different the results are with different mouse pads. It may not lead to any significant improvement, but it won’t cost me anything to try mouse pads I already have laying around the house and it id fun to play when there aren’t a whole lot of zeros at the end of the price tag.
