Greetings all. Long term lurker on this this thread, and owner of regular and plus E-mats for a couple of months. I have already seen great results with the usual placement of mats in line with what everyone else reports. I currently have mats in the breaker box, behind the speaker drivers, under the amp, under the digital power supply for dac and streamer, and under an Isotek power strip which supplies them all.
I had a bit of a revelation today through an accidental re-arrangement of my cables, and wanted to report it, for the benefit of others. I get the impression from this thread that a number of key uses of the mats has come from experimentation, so here’s another one to try. (As always your results will vary with your particular system and circumstances.)
For a while I have been thinking about trialling cable lifters. My speakers are only about 1m either side of my amp, so my 1.5m speaker cables have a lot of slack in them, and cables had been lying on the ground (carpeted floor over concrete). Today I decided to tidy up the rear of the equipment rack. The Isotek power strip sits on the floor along the back of the rack, on top of two regular E-mats (the strip is only about half the depth of the mats). I tidied up the power cables, then in order to better separate the power cables from the speaker cables I coiled the slack part of the speaker cables into two loops per cable, secured with a cable tie. I then set these up so they sit vertically on the unused half of the E-mats. That way not only do I get most of the cable lifted up off the floor without having to use cable lifters, but the only (small) part of the cable which does touch the floor is resting on the front part of the E-mat.
The result is extraordinary. I would say a greater impact on noise floor, 3D image, separation and micro-detail than when putting the E-mats into the system in the first place on the breaker box and under the key components. This could be due to getting the speakers cables mostly off the floor (I might have had the same result with just cable lifters), but I suspect its more to do with getting the coiled part of the cable over and touching the E-mat. This may be something that other people have already reported, but if not, I suggest if you have some slack in your cables you try looping them and putting the loop on an E-mat and see if you also get a significant impact on sound. (if the cable wont stay on the mat, use a little blu-tack to hold it in place). I hope this helps people with another potential step up due to these amazing mats.