Rane TTM-57SL Mixer
by Chris Hafner | Published November 2007 | In the Mix Archives

There was a moment - brief, it now seems - that there was a significant lag between DJ software (exemplified by Serato) and the hardware that we all have to use. Take a poll of House Music lovers and you'll find a lot of them employed in IT and other industries, so we became the ultimate early adapters for a lot of software that's now used by DJs from all genres. Unless you've had to sort through the spaghetti wires in the back of a mixer at a peak hour when everyone's staring at you and the room is so quiet you can hear a pin drop, you probably won't appreciate this. But due to the age of the leading hardware out there, mix software often created more problems for audioheads even while it made things easier for the DJ.

The Rane TTM-57SL is a huge step up from the company's signature 56 series, and happily is the first of a new generation of mixers to really embrace the reality that mixing is no longer just two turntables and a microphone. I'm skeptical of all-in-one products that purport to do everything but cook me toast and kiss me before I leave for the office, but this is one that really, really delivers.

Rane's newest mixer comes with a copy of Serato Scratch Live in the same package, but more than that, it incorporated a dedicated control switch for Serato right there on the mixer itself. I was again pretty skeptical about how this would work out, but the two companies were involved in an active partnership and it comes through in a fully integrated, high-end mixer.

In fact, while writing down all of the things that I liked about this mixer, I realized that this machine makes up for all the things that I've in general criticized about the rise of the digital DJ. By enabling Serato controls from the mixer, the TTM-57SL could herald a return to the jock that abolishes the distractions of clicking around a computer screen for something you can control with both hands. The hardware controls feature six buttons that can be assigned with commands from Serato, a couple of joysticks and knobs. The joysticks are a revolutionary feature and the knobs can be used to directly scroll through your playlist.

The only drawback is a limited effects package - probably as a sop to Serato so this wouldn't totally enable a knock-off product to gobble up the market. I could go on about this product forever, though. It's easily one of those products that will be copied by all mixers that follow it.