2014 - Good DDR pads?

So I'm trying to get back into DDR after a long hiatus. I used to have a Cobalt Flux but the controller box died and the company died and thus my warranty was useless *heaves a deep sigh*

Are there any companies out there still making good quality DDR hard pads? Money is no object.

For hard pads I've heard nothing but good things about Omega GX pads (or PX, TX, ITGX... whatever suits you).

I've been meaning to get some of these myself, at some point, but I've been short on money.

I have two of the Omega GX pads. I can vouch for them. If you're going to use them on carpet, you'll need to make a base for them, but on a hard surface, they're great.

Any recommendation of a soft pad in the cheaper range?

http://dancepadmania.com/ sent me some pads to evaluate just recently - I haven't gotten them yet (they're due this weekend) but they claim to have the best soft pads currently on the market and they are confident enough to send us them to try them out. I'd say they're a good bet.

EDIT: Actually, the first one just showed up (it's one of the soft ones, not foam). I'll go give it a shot.

Alright, first impression of the non-slip pad incoming. I've only played a few rounds and will have more to say when the rest of the pads show up.

The pad does in fact live up to the claim of not slipping (I've never had a soft pad that ACTUALLY didn't slip!). I played some 6s to 8s and it didn't budge even a little. I didn't notice any obvious latency and it was very sensitive. I had some issues with buttons sticking until I tapped them again, but nothing bad enough to make me fail a song... although it did botch my scores a bit. I was able to pass 8s without too much trouble, but it felt the most comfortable around 6. I would be comfortable recommending this for people who play mostly light/medium (and less intense hard charts).

I'll post about the foam pads when I get them, and how they behave for doubles (and maybe also see how some other people handle them) when I get them. They're supposed to show up tomorrow. I expect the foam pads to hold up quite a bit better for heavy charts, as they tend to.

Those dance pads look pretty promising. Something tells me to favor those over DDRGAME ones, but I'd definitely like to hear your impressions about them... not that I need more dance pads, but I'm glad somebody is still making them.

First impressions for the foam pads:

The material of the bottom is different than the soft ones, and it seemed to actually want to slip slightly more (oddly enough). I played G2 from Ultramix 2 (10) on it and it only moved about two inches, so I don't think it's an actual issue. The foam is definitely higher density than whatever my old foam pads were using, and I didn't feel like I was sinking into them or anything. The buttons responded well and I didn't encounter any stickiness to them that wasn't attributed to my own feet being where they shouldn't, and I was able to get decent scores on easy songs and passes on things up to 10 - it's really difficult to hit triplets and runs on them that are increasingly common as the difficulty goes up, so I'd say for practicality you should stay below 10s (except maybe easy ones, like G2). Neither of the pads had any issue whatsoever with dropping holds or missing steps, but they are very sensitive so you need to lift your foot almost completely off the panel for it to stop registering (this is what makes triplets/etc so hard).

I felt comfortable with 8s and 9s on these ones, but go for a metal pad if you will be consistently playing 9 and up. I didn't have any technical issues with any of these pads whatsoever, although I should set up auto mapping in StepMania for these for one of the next releases.

EDIT: Actually, I've been getting similar amounts of slip in a bunch of things. Other than that, they're all around better, though.

EDIT 2: Also, I believe my old foam pads were DDRGame ones, the foam in these is significantly better than those were back when I had them (but maybe they changed the design over the years).

EDIT 3: 11s are hopeless unless you've got something to use as a bar.

EDIT 4: Note that they do need some break in rounds before they stop sticking, so the surface is flat like it should be or something like that.