Did you see that new Rane SL3 at MusikMesse this week? Man, I haven't seen that much hubbub over a little black box since. . . you know, I'm feeling a bit wistful today; I think I'LL avoid the obvious plane crash joke.

While at first glance, the new Rane SL3 interface for Serato Scratch doesn't seem radically improved, the thing's undergone a pretty intense overhaul. The conversion architecture has been upgraded to 24-bit, and all the input and output jacks have been swapped out for improved components. The USB jack -- one of the most common failure points of the SL1 -- has been beefed-up as well.

The chassis is also beefier; Rane claimed to have run the SL1 over with a truck, with the interface remaining fully functional. With its lower-profile, the SL3 is supposedly even huskier; let's see them perform the TC Electronic G-System Tank Test on it, I say.

I could go on, but I think we'd all prefer to have a bookish Australian talk about the rest of the SL3's features: