Ever since I got hooked on Serato i’ve been looking for a solid mixer that features linkable control surface to the Serato software interface and upon the announcement of the Rane-Sixty-Eight I immediately put in my 4 month $2,700 cash-down pre-order. On top of the announcement of the Sixty-Eight, the partnership between Serato and Ableton known as the ‘Bridge. and ‘Mixtape’ software collaborations made the 4 month wait feel like years as I hoped the Sixty-Eight would be the missing hardware link between Serato MIDI, and Ableton Live, and remixing on the fly.
Now that I have been using the Sixty-Eight for a few months now, it has and hasn’t lived up to it’s hype. Yes it IS a revolutionary first step between hardware linking Serato and a mixer, however like most first-generation products it falls short of what it COULD be.
Revolutionary Sixty-Eight Amazingness:
CUE BUTTONS: If you have gotten your hands on a Sixty-Eight, you know the Serato Cue point linking is amazing. (Green square buttons along each side of the mixer) No more need for CAPS LOCK + number keys for getting to your cues, its all there right where you need it. Originally I was disappointed in how cheap the square pads felt (think hard plastic click buttons) however after using the mixer for a while the buttons work fine.
ROLL: Holy shit this tool added on the sixty-eight is awesome. It allows you to make instant loops in serato on the upper right and left rectangular buttons. Each side corresponds to the deck your affecting so it’s really straight forward. the knob above the buttons allows you to switch loop timings from 8bar-4bar-2bar-1bar-14bar etc… There are two modes, loop mode, and auto roll mode. Loop mode is just like the current looping in serato: it just makes a loop and when you want to get out of it it starts from the point that was looped. The auto roll loops the track and then goes back to where the track would have been had the loop not been activated. can really enhance some transitions between tracks and can spice up live mashups. I find myself using the auto roll a lot more than the loop, but both are available and really simple to do some really cool stuff with your tracks. Novation just made a sweet little $99 hardware add-on if you dont have 2.5k to drop on a Sixty-Eight: see their Dicer (I just purchased on on www.djcity.com and it actually just arrived as i’m typing this 
SERATO SOFTWARE EFFECT EXTERNAL MIDI->SIXTY-EIGHT LINKING: This was an unexpected Easter-Egg I found when I plugged in my KORG nano MIDI board. If you havn’t MIDI controlled the Serato built in effects yet, jump on this band wagon as soon as you can. They are actually really solid effects and are fully customizable. Want a meatier lowpass filter? Go edit the lowpass filter parameters in Serato and assign the effect to your MIDI controller knob and now you have a great filter tuned to exactly what YOU wan’t. What the Sixty-Eight adds to The Serato effects + a MIDI controller is mainly in the Delay and Echo effects. Rane was brilliant and made the vertical faders act as ‘input killers’ to the software effects. What this does is creates a POST-MIXER effect. To understand what I mean by this I’ll explain real quick: The DJM800 is the reigning king of FX, however have you ever been frustrated that the only good way to echo out is by stopping the platter? If you turn down the faders channel you also turn down the effect so the only good way to echo out is by stopping the platter. That’s because the effect is PRE-MIXER: The effect is occurring before it enters the assigned channel therefor lowering the fader on that channel is going to lower the volume on both the input signal (the track being effected) AND the effect making it a frustrating tool to use. The Rane Sixty-Eight solves this by making the effects POST-CHANNEL meaning all you have to do is hit deck one with a bit of echo and then just flip the fader all the way down and deck one will echo out perfectly. Amazing, i’ve been looking for this for a long time.
TWO USB INPUTS: Everyone who’s heard of the Sixty-Eight has probably knows that it has 2 USB’s. That means no more awkward roll (or other) transitions when switching from the opening to the closing DJ, the incoming DJ can literally take over the decks and mix in easily. I know there’s some venues using a TTM-56 W/ no Serato power cord so switching out is literally done by mixing into iTunes: suuuper weak. Not a whole lot to say about the 2 USB’s other than that it solves the transition issue that’s been around for years. Solid.
Sixty-Eight Sixty-Schmate! >:(
FILTER: The filter is bullshit. Doesn’t come close to Pioneers awesome DJM800 filters. I was really really sad when I first hit the filter knob and heard its weakness, there is just no feeling in it at all. I solve this by using Serato’s software filters and a MIDI controller, but with the $2,700 price tag of the Sixty-Eight I feel kinda cheated that the filter is shit. Disappointments 
FLEXFX BUTTONS: To assign an effect to a channel you have to hit the channels FlexFX button located just above the headphones cues. When activating or deactivating one of these buttons, the channels sound is BADLY effected. It sounds like a cd skips for a fraction of a second, kind of like a volume dip feedback of some kind. Again for $2,700 WTF Rane? To get around this I try and hit the FLEXFX’s on a beat so its kinda not noticeable, but fuck that, that’s bull shit… very unhappy
AUDIO QUALITY: As when comparing the Rane TTM57 with the Pioneer DJM 800; Pioneer just has a better sound quality output and this is no different with the Rane Sixty Eight. I’m not sure if ‘muddy’ is the right word, but it definitely lacks something in its output quality that i’ve noticed. Was hoping they would have fixed this as it seems to be a common complaint of DJ’s that Rane Mixers just lack good output quality…
POWER BUTTON: Petty complaint, but its kinda hard to get to when you have two XLR’s plugged in.
THE BRIDGE AND MIXTAPE: Havn’t come out yet, I was hoping they would be released with the Sixty-Eight: ’nuff said.
MAJOR MAJOR MAJJJJOR SOFTWARE ISSUES: This is what makes the Sixty-Eight currently worthless. I wouldn’t trust this mixer at a professional gig because it is ridiculously unstable. Luckily the main trials I put it through was at a 4th of July day party at a buddies that I DJed for free because I discovered that with prolonged use (more than 2 hours) the software and hardware just get into gnarly conflicts with each-other or something. The Serato Cue point just stop working randomly and the only way to get them back is to turn off the mixer and restart Serato. Occasionally the waveforms just stop loading and working all together and restarting Serato and the mixer don’t always fix the issue. Sometimes Serato gets so overloaded with im-not-sure-what that the audio literally skips, and its an internal software skip, not a record skip. Super weird, not sure what’s up with that. In the last 3 months there hasn’t been ANY software updates for the sixty-eight so if you have one and have been experiencing these issues you just bought a really expensive mixer that isn’t trustworthy. If you run the sixty-eight version of serato (2.0.1) Many of these software issues carry over to Serato SL1-SL3 boxes so beware, DO NOT go to the club running Serato 2.0.1. Lastly with prolonged use (when i was at the 4th of July party) The mixer went into complete failure. All buttons started flashing wildly, audio quality went to shit and then stopped completely. Restarting the mixer did not fix the problem, i literally had to wait for about 24 hours for it to start working again, weirdest issues I have ever seen with a mixer. Music at the party ended, needless to say I was one pissed off DJ on the 4th.
REVELATIONS OF A $2,700 MISTAKE: To give a full rounded paragraph of review: the Sixty-Eight has brought forward some sick hardware technology, however like most first generation shit; it’s got a lot of great ideas, but executed them poorly. I love what the sixty-eight symbolizes, but wait for the next generation model (or at least a Serato update) to come out before making any rash decisions about buying it. Currently as it stands I wouldn’t for the life of me bring this thing to a club to perform on, it’s just way to unreliable. On top of that it’s quality vs. $2,700 just don’t match up. Rane needs to get their research and development department to start looking into audio and effects quality if they are going to be trying to compete with Pioneer in the realm of DJ Mixers.
Assuming that future Serato releases like 2.1 and 2.2 fix the issues that currently plague the Sixty-Eight; the fact is Ive had $2,700 tied up in a unusable mixer for about 6-8 months (given pre-order time and the last 2-3 months of frustrations) The Sixty-Eight is basically in a beta-test phase. The cash I spent 6 months ago could have been better used to collect interest in my bank account waiting to buy the sixty-eight when it actually works.
DJRi — August 4, 2010
Serato 2.1 beta fixes many of these software issues, but also raises other smaller ones. The Sixty-Eight is still not club ready yet, but probably will be upon the official release of Serato 2.1
DJRi — August 4, 2010
My discussions on the Serato Forum regarding Serato 2.1
You can comment on my post here:
http://www.serato.com/forum/discussion/308535
Prior to Serato 2.1 beta I thought i had just thrown away $2,700 on this mixer. It crashed constantly, didnt work right, basically had rediculous problems that made me never ever want to perform on it at the club. You can see my full list of likes and dislikes here:
http://starryeyedmusic.com/blog/hardware-review-rane-sixty-eight-revolutionary-but-worthless
The point of this post is, I just did a test run of Serato 2.1 beta and it fixes a whole lot of the software problems I had before. Everything is running much better, they added midi linking so you can go fix the shitty factory settings of the filter now. Still a few issues and i’ll outline them below:
To assign the new single software filter (and other new effects in 2.1) to the sixty eight filter you can only select one effect instead of 3 like (on each side) like with the previous effect banks of 2.0. I use all the other effects as well; for example I midi link the echo effect so limiting the the new software effects to 2 instead of 6 takes away a lot of what I use. Especially given the fact that you HAVE to midi link the ‘single filter’ because the factory settings of the sixty-eight filter are so shitty.
(to serato staff) Is there any way you can expand it to be able to select all the effects again (or at least 3 on each bank) with all the new effects as well? That way I can fix the filter knobs on the sixty eight by midi linking them to the new single software filter, but also be able to assign the other effects available to my midi controller or other knobs on the sixty-eight.
Also when using the Dicer all of the Sixty-Eight square cue buttons no longer work. Might be useful for a lot of guys to have those still work even if the dicer is in use. I know for myself id like to keep the dicer primarily on auto roll and loop mode and leave the cueing to the sixty-eights cue buttons
Also when using the sixty eight flexfx cue buttons (the blue ones above the headphone cues to activate a channel to be effected) When those buttons are pressed there is a lot of audio feedback (only when using them to cue serato software effects) right when they are pressed to activate or deactivate a channel it sounds like the channel volume is lowered for a fraction of a second, really not pleasant at all. Not sure if anyone has mentioned that yet, hopefully its possible to fix that? (USB 5insert button is activated and software effects are being run through the sixty eight)
Also just wanted to say I was super ridiculously frustrated with the sixty-eight under 2.0.1, but 2.1 fixed the majority of the frustrations so good work, its a lot better now and hopefully the above suggestions can be implemented as well. I understand that the Sixty-Eight is a huge step forward in hardware-software linking technology and hence will probably be prone to bugs in the pioneering stages and it’s good to see some of them getting worked out.
-DJRi
DJRi — August 5, 2010
Response from the Serato Team to my questions:
Hi DJRi!
I’m happy to hear that you are enjoying the mixer!
Serato Scratch LIve 2.1 is an update to the Scratch Live software that runs on your computer, not the mixer itself. I suspect that most of the problems with the Sixty-Eight that you say were resolved with Scratch Live 2.1 were actually issues with Scratch Live 2.0 that were resolved with Scratch Live 2.1. Scratch Live 2.0 was a big step forward, and of course there will always be growing pains. Scratch Live 2.1 has fixes for nearly all issues that were discovered after the 2.0 release.
Scratch Live 2.1 does come with new firmware for the Sixty-Eight mixer. The primary purpose of this new firmware (v1.13) was to add more functionality for MIDI learning within the Scratch Live software so that you can MIDI learn any control. We also fixed a user-reported bug with the crossfader. I don’t think these changes would have affected the problems you were experiencing with Scratch Live 2.0.
The blue buttons above the cues in the channel strips aren’t cues, they’re FlexFX mix assignment buttons. Meaning, when you press that button and it is lit, that channel strip is now feeding into the FlexFX mix. When you press the USB Insert button, you are routing that FlexFX mix to Scratch Live on your computer where the software effects in the DJ-FX plugin affect the audio and send it back to the mixer. There are details on how all of this works including diagrams in your user manual for the Sixty-Eight.
I have spent some time looking for the drop in volume that you have described and I have not been able to reproduce it. Since you are running a beta copy of the software, it would be best for you to go back to the beta area and submit a detailed bug report so that Serato’s very talented development team can investigate and fix it for you!
Both Rane and Serato care very much about what you guys think about our products, and we value your feedback very highly. We are always striving to create the best product possible for you. What I’m trying to say is that while other companies may blow off users’ criticisms, we actually pay close attention and take notes. Of course we can’t be changing things for every individual’s request, but we will take note and try to produce what “the people” as a whole want. So that being said, we’d love to hear what it is about the Sixty-Eight filter effect that you do not like. So far the filter effect and the channel filters (I’m not sure which one you were referring to) have been very popular, so I’m more than a little curious to hear what specifically you would like to see improved.
DJRi — August 5, 2010
My Response to Serato:
In regards to the filter, The new serato based software filter is amazing, but the sixty-eight filter doesnt have punch or depth to it. The new addition into the software filter has much more feeling in it when it is set to a resonance of 2-3. To compare that to the built in hardware filter I would say it would be like setting the software one to a resonance of .50-1.00 so there isn’t a whole lot of power or feeling, more like turning down the 3knob EQ lows knob on high pass and turning down the 3knob EQ highs knob on low pass. It may be possible that my sixty-eight somehow has a weaker filter than others, but id be surprised if the majority of users liked it as it is noticeably weak. I happen to like intense filters more than weaker ones, but i’m sure different DJ’s like different filter types
One issue ive encountered with fixing the filter with MIDI linking the software one to the sixty eight, is when you link one to the individual channel filter knobs, the old hardware filter is still activated when using the software midi linked one as well. Not sure if there’s a way to completely turn off the hardware filter and just use the knob as a midi controller.
The other is that if you midi link channel one’s filter, it also effects channel two when the flexfx are activated for channel 2. so if you leave the channel 1 filter at max after filtering out the sound and then activate the flexfx on channel 2, it reads channel ones position and feeds the software filter to channel 2. It would be nice to be able to basically remap FX to individual channels they dont effect other channels. For example with the filter, if I remap channel 1 and 2 filter knobs to the software filters, they effect both channels when the flexfx buttons are activated for both channels, if there was a way to keep each channels filter remapping to themselves that would solve the ‘not liking the filter quality’ issues Ive been having because i could basically just make a new filters in the software to my exact liking for each channel. the current issue in the software that doesnt make this possible, is that assigning one filter still effects both channels.
If i were to ‘envision’ a real solution to this it would probably require a whole new drop down page or second window for effect reassignment. You would need to have options for individual channel assignments, and then universal (all flexfx activated channels effected) assignments, just like it’s set up now where all activated channels are effected with one software effect. Basically to be able to assign the individual 4 channels their own filter or similar effect linked to the hardware filter knob that only effects the individual channel even if other channels have their flexfx activated
-Right now if you have 2 channels flexfx activated, both channels will be effected if any software effect is activated, what the above was looking to describe was being able to isolate single effects for single channels. I feel like that’s a hard concept to convey with out physically showing what im talking about on the mixer, lol)
Im in the process of documenting the hardware issues I have been having on a video so you will be able to see and hear what i am talking about with the flexfx->software effects activating that makes the volume cut out when pressed. I also found that the echo effect in the serato 2.1 turns down the volume significantly when activated, but instead of a .1 second volume blip (like with the flexfx button issue) it just lowers the volume considerably, and permanently until the effect is turned off.
Anyway i’ll keep plugging along and let you know my findings, thanks for getting back to me
DJRi — August 5, 2010
Serato Response:
Ok I think understand what you mean about the filter. The filter resonance can greatly affect the feel and character of the filter. Unfortunately, filter resonance preference varies greatly between music genres.
I understand what you’re describing about the channels being individually affected by the Serato software effects. Unfortunately, the mixer architecture does not support it. Hitting that blue FlexFX assign button on the channel strip adds that channel to any other channels that may already be in the FlexFX mix. And with USB Insert on, all the assigned channels together are affected by the Serato software effects. A basic diagram of how this works is on page 10 of your Sixty-Eight user’s manual, and a detailed signal processing diagram can be found on page 48.
As far as the sound quality vs Pioneer: I think our sound quality is vastly superior based on both quantitative measurement and qualitative judgment. One way that the audio may become “muddied” would be by setting your channel EQs on the mixer to the same positions as you would have them on a DJM800. The channel EQs are a lot different than a DJM800, so the Mids at, say, 1 o’clock on the Sixty-Eight will sound different than the Mids at 1 o’clock on the DJM800. Some people seem to be viewing the Sixty-Eight as a spinoff or replacement for the DJM800. I think this is poor way to view it. This is a completely new beast. While there definitely are similarities, they are still very different pieces of equipment.
The “.1 second volume blip,” you said that only happens when using the Serato effects via USB Insert, correct?
DJRi — August 5, 2010
My Response to Serato:
Yes, the volume blips are only when the USB insert light is on and the software effects are being used. When the USB insert is not illuminated there is no blip. For example if just the hardware effects are being used, there is no blip when activating the flexfx buttons, same goes with external controllers like the EFX 1000; no blip. Only with the USB insert does it blip
In regards to individual software effects not being able to be assigned to individual channels, maybe write it down for possible incorporation on a future mixer. It would be incredible to be able to customize a mixers individual channel effects and knob assignments based on user preference, EX: filter design like that talked about above. That was more of an observation/inquisition i came across today, not a complaint. No other mixer would even have the possibility to do something like that (obviously)
On the audio quality I can’t place what is dull about it, but it just doesnt sound as crisp. Im running it currently on two Mackie SRM-450′s and have only used it once in a club (back on serato 2.0.1 and had some software issues, so im waiting for the official release of 2.1 before I try that again) That being, I havnt had the opportunity to have the mixer working as it should on a proper club system, however on the mackies the sound quality does seem muddled in comparison the the DJM 600 I used to run on. I’m not clipping any channels, or the master, so we’ll see once i have an opportunity to bring it out to a gig how the sound goes there on a larger system, however it has been my and fellow DJ’s experience that the Rane TTM 57 output quality doesn’t match the DJM 800. When i’m comfortable enough with the stability to get the sixty-eight back in a club i’ll be sure to give it a good listen and see if my opinion changes at all.
Thanks for the help