One of the most popular set-ups judging by crowd sizes (and requests from our audience on social media) here at NAMM 2018 has to be the Rane Seventy-Two mixer and Twelve motorised decks, for Serato DJ (soon to be called Serato DJ Pro).
Much has been written already about the innovative Rane Seventy-Two high-end battle mixer (that’ll set you back the best part of two grand) and the Twelves, but what few have seen is what they look and feel like, and how they perform. So while they’ll only be making their way to your local dealer in March, I can give you some early feedback.
Not surprisingly, they feel typically high-end and very “Rane”, and the Serato touchscreen looks completely in place. There are still bugs to be ironed out in the software integration around the touchscreen, but the company is confident that’s all on course for launch.
Indeed, the stream of scratch DJs using the set-up appeared to be quite happy to DJ on it with the laptop out of view – this bodes well for the way the bigger picture of how software has been implemented on the touchscreen.
We loved the fact that you can scroll through your waveforms on the touchscreen, and the X/Y pad is obviously going to be a great boom for creative DJs wanting to “go extreme” with their effects, especially as it’s right there where you need it, in the middle of your set-up.
Our full review of these units (coming soon) will delve deep into the feature-set and give you some considered feedback once we’ve had time to really get stuck in and have a play ourselves, but meanwhile in this short chat with Fred Jones of Rane DJ, we take a hands-on look at them, talk about the thinking behind them, and highlight a couple of standout features. Fred also kindly gave us a little demo to start getting you excited about what they’re capable of.
Video talkthrough
Do you have a dose of gear lust having seen this set-up? What do you think about the innovations in scratch set-ups over the past few years? (Cue buttons, relative mode etc?) Let us know your thoughts in the comments…
Phil Morse
