Rane TTM 57SL Mixer And Serato Scratch Live: Two Decks, Two Effects, Too Few Buttons
When even DJ Puzzle can't easily figure out your control layout, you might want to consider a redesign. Jason Donnelly's review of the Rane TTM 57SL hits a rough patch as our protagonist is confounded by a needlessly convoluted control layout.
Regardless, he does manage to engage a few of the Scratch Live effects. Make that a couple. This rig only comes with two effects, a filter and an echo. Still, it's a well built unit with great sound quality.
JASON DONNELLY: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. This is Jason Donnelly, and we are still with the Rane TTM 57SL, and I just wanted to show you a brief overview of the two effects that are in this. Note, two effects: there’s an echo and a filter. So, you’re not really loaded up in the effects department but they sound pretty good. So, you hit or press the group button down in B1 to get it towards -- I’m sorry --B3 to get it to the playlist. Press B1 to play the song.
It’s kind of goofy now we’re getting around this device. So, now we’re in B6, and now I have control over the effects parameters. That is the filter, then you can use the joystick. Now, if I want to go to the echo, just press deck 1, and it toggles to deck 1 which is also confusing, and now you can adjust the echo parameters.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
And let’s filter this deck A. Here we go.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
So there you have the effects section of the Rane mixer. Let’s have a look at the software real quick. So, here is the Scratch Live software. In the left, you can see our deck spinning. And using our little joystick here, as you can see down here in the lower left corner, there’s a joystick moving around, a pretty cool graphic UI.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
Reverse feature sounds great. Let’s scroll through the track from the beginning. Perfect. Group 1, we’ve got cue points.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
Two, in order to set cue points, we could simply set those with the joysticks. Three would be play, reverse, cued scrolling. Fourth we’ve got another set of -- it closes our looping. We can sample these, so let’s see.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
And...
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
...five, look and record.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
So, we’re apparently are recording it, and group 6 is our effects. And then you have your effects here that are limited here to echo and filter. I mean two effects with this device.
[JASON DONNELLY PERFORMING A DEMONSTRATION OF THE RANE TTM 57SL]
So, anyway, to recap overall, it’s a decent sounding mixer. Of course, Serato Scratch is a great software application for DJs who are into turntablism and scratching and using the vinyl controllers. It’s very reliable. We don’t have as many features as we would in like similar programs like M-Audio’s Torq, but I guess it’s safe to say that it’s a lot more reliable than the other programs. The control surface on the Rane is a little hard to graft because you’re toggling between groups and decks. Sometimes deck doesn’t mean deck and means effect, and so I think they could have improved on it by adding more buttons and faders and knobs and what-not but overall pretty decent.
So, this is Jason Donnelly with Gearwire.Com, and thanks for watching.
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