GAME CHANGER ALERT RANE 72 & RANE 12

For all of you early birds, I got massive news from Rane! I woke up with this email about it, but to be honest who still reads the Serato spam anyway? I ended up watching the actual press release and initial reviews of... you ready? The all new Rane 72 mixer and the Rane 12 controllers!

Now you might be like "Alex, what do you care about that release, you're a digital DJ, you can't turntable!".

You're right, I can't really, my deck dropping skills are always half a beat off and my scratching sounds like a cat trying to fight it's way out of a metal dumpster. BUT! This release is truly game changing. I might actually switch to this setup as soon as I win the lottery!

Let me explain: Remember the NS7III? If not, I will refresh your memory: The NS7 series was bound to be a controller from Numark designed to follow the functions of a turntable setup in a controller package. 45's for spinners, high torque motors, recently added screen at the length of the entire setup (Take that CDJ's).

Now Rane seems to have beefed that concept up a little with this:

The all new Rane 12!

Note: This is NOT a turntable!

This is a full-sized vinyl covered controller, with a high-torque motor to follow the feel of industry leading turntables, but instead of a needle you get a USB port to shoot all that scratching 1's and 0's to the mixer.

More on that in a second.

When it comes to capabilities, the Rane 12 is pretty standard, with a pitch selector in the battle position (top right), which makes Rane call this bad boy a "battle controller". Directly under it you have the pitch modes (8% ; 16% ; 50% - in case you wanna mix DnB with Nora Moore at the actual tempo). In the top left corner you have a Needle Search Strip, typical to those of any Serato controllers, but here's the game changing part. That small blue button next to the strip bar can switch it into hotcue mode, which ultimately allows you to trigger up to 8 hotcues right there, next to your deck. The 4 buttons underneath the Needle Search Strip are actually deck selectors! Rane was a real G and provided us with an option to turn one deck into 4, and to be honest at the steep price of €799,. it is much appreciated.

Hold your horses, now this is not all. Rane didn't just serve us an €800,. controller and hype took over this blog. What did you think homie?

Check this out:

This is the brand new Rane 72 battle mixer!

In true spirit of Pioneer's DJM S9,

the Rane 72 mixer follows a design that will stick with us for a while. And for good reason!

First things first, any turntable-oriented mixer needs some fresh faders to make them cuts nice and smooth. Well, I didn't get this mixer for reviews but our friendly neighbor DJCity's one and only Mojaxx took care of us and uploaded this morning a very in-depth review of this whole setup.

-Click here to watch that review.-

According to Mr. Mojaxx, Rane did not disappoint with the fader quality, as they installed their typical "American Muscle" beefy faders, which for some might take a little adjusting to, but nonetheless a very good sign to start off this review.

Above said faders we have the reason I compared this mixer to Pioneer's DJM S9. The performance pads have now more funcionality than ever. First things first, If you suddenly decide that scratching doesn't really work for you that night, two of the performance pads can control, among other things, the play/cue buttons. This is really interesting as when you are connected to the Rane 12 controllers, the decks actually start/stop spinning upon touch.

Another interesting function of these performance pads is the ability to change the pitch of a certain hotcue. I have seen this before on mixers, but this is truly an easy way to go about some very creative transitions - in the true style of the RedBull 3Style competition. Following of course, we have autoloop functions that use a small button underneath to control parameters, we got the manual loop for the tryhards out there but also a Roll, Pad FX, Sampler, Slicer and Transform mode trigger. Of course, this is a lot to remember especially because each of these modes can be changed by double tapping the according button, but the new feature here is the fact that you can use both of the sides of the pads for the same deck, esentially doubling the possibilities.

Like I said : GAME CHANGER! Above that you have normal EQ strips with an added filter knob, but also the two "Fighter Pilot" Switches for quick, snappy effects.

I won't be a douche about this one, but I feel like those birds who steal anything that shines bright in the light. This screen caught my attention from the first second, and for good reason!

Rane blessed us with a sick touchscreen making me never wanna take a look at my laptop again. Here you can browse through your library, view your waveforms, change parameters for all effects and also the almighty Sync and KeySync functions.

This mixer also comes with analog effects, Rane decided to call FLEX FX (Go figure, thanks for the shout-out guys!) Of course, through the screen you can change all the parameters of your reverbs, delays, echo-outs etc., But you can also combine that with built-in Serato fx, so that now you have no more excuses to use the same stutter, reverb or delay twice.

On the back you have yo USB ports, much like the SZ, for seamless transitions between DJ's and b2b sessions, your regular 240V power input, a main XLR output, booth out, a secondary RCA I/O, individual deck I/O with both Phono and CD capabilities, plus an Aux in on each deck, Phono grounds obviously, two microphone inputs and last but not least, the Rane 12 controller inputs.

On the front you have multiple control knobs, from the crossfader cut to the decks themselves, MIC effects, level and tone, an input for headphones, a footswitch input, and, of course, the reverse switches and flip decks switch.

All in all this is a very complete setup, ideal for everyone and anyone, from turntablism gods to mere mortals and beginners.

Here's a routine to kick in some of that inspiration:

Let me know in the comments below what you think about this brand new release from Rane!

Thank you for reading and catch you next time!