Acquiring Dance Pads

Although Stepmania can be used with any USB controller, or the keyboard, play on a dance pad is the best method for playing simfiles from Dance Dance Revolution. However, most commercial dance pads are made for the Playstation 2, so to use them an adapter is necessary. Alternatively(and more cheaply) you can build your own pad.

Soft pads

Soft pads come in two general varieties; slim sheet mats, and Ignition-style. Sheet pads are very difficult to use on anything but the simplest songs; they have no underlying support, resulting in constant sliding, tearing, and frustration from not knowing where your feet are relative to the arrows.

Ignition pads are a significant improvement. These pads have a zipper all around the edge, with room for hard foam. Inserting the foam makes the pad more stiff, greatly improving all aspects of performance.

Soft pads damage easily if played on in shoes, and even the Ignition pads still slide and tear and lack the feel of the arcade. For this reason, "hard" pads are marketed.

Hard pads

Plastic hard pads have been sold for years; but nobody recommends using these as the plastic is not of a good enough quality. It begins to loudly squeak and develop cracks very quickly.

Most metal pads, on the other hand, are designed soundly enough for reliable use after modification. But they usually need the modification; nearly every marketed pad ships with some deficiency that requires a part replacement or resolder for full reliability.

The most prestigious brand, Cobalt Flux, is also one of the only ones that doesn't require special modification. A common complaint against CF is that all the panels are at an even height, so that you can't feel where you are as on an arcade pad. But recently CF released a kit to raise the panels and add brackets, which has largely resolved this issue.