CD Mats

Again, untweaked, I have tried treating CDs before and found no great benefit I could be sure of. The Marigo made an audible difference I could hear in the first minute of listening, no struggle to convince oneself of an improvement.

Untweaked. I once did the edges of some of my CDs with green pen but could discern no difference so that was the end of my CD tweaking. I'm not convinced by any of the nonsense presented as "scientific explanations" for any more recent CD treatments so I'm not going to bother wasting my time or money.

So saying, the SID mat I was advocating is green. Until we get a chance to compare it with a differently-colored SID mat we can't say that this is part of the beneficial package.

Marigo 3D Signature Mat is the only one to use

David12 and Maclogan,

Were your CDs otherwise untweaked, or were you using the mats in addition to other treatments?

The SID mat works well in my Arcam CD93 up to a point. Well-recorded material sounds more transparent and the few "digital highs" I hear from this cdp are ameliorated. On ordinary or badly-recorded material the mat seems to have little or no effect.

I have tried a few, Blacklight, Ringmat and the Marigo signature. Only the Marigo made a worthwhile difference and that was very clear indeed and worth the greater cost. Unfortunately its only the costly tweaks that seem to work well.

Aurex claims that its mat will work with changers as long as they are the horizontal type. The SID specifically says not to use it with changers. Not sure about the other kinds out there.

I'm using the Blacklight CD mat. When copying disc's using my dual tray phillips CD recorder, certain CD's won't copy even after multiple trys. I put the mat on, and voila, the cd copies. Must be doing something eh?.
I only hear a subtle improvement when playing music on the big rig tho. Haven't done a with/without test since I've improved the front end, I'll try to get to that next week.

With CD's that have had nothing done to them, except for using Bedini Ultra Clarifier de-magnetizing before each play, the top of the line Marigo Signature 3-D CD mat, and the Herbie's Audio Lab Grungebuster 2 CD ring mat are quite audibly effective.
For great majority of CD's I prefer the Marigo, although the Grungebuster has the distinctive extra effect (call it a "feature") of seemingly shelving downward the treble brightness which afflicts a certain proportion of CD's, even when other aspects are better served by the Marigo.
In my systems, this favorable tone control effect has allowed 1950's era recordings now digitally re-mastered into "too bright" CD's to get back in play rotation.
May be peculiar to my systems, but others also have noted this taming of the shrill in my systems when certain non-audiophle approved recordings sneak onto a CD tray.

I have never heard a mat, but I would bet that none of them are designed to work with changers.