Rane 2016 or Urei 1620

  • Thread starter Thread starter BBL
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Jasonic,

I've seen the R-1 advertised in UK-based DJ Magazine for £1999, so in US dollars that's well above 2,000, right?

You might consider, given your bad experiences with Numark, that Numark is the U.S. distributor/service center for all Vestax products. That, to me, is frightening if we're talking about a well-over $2,000 mixer with pretentions of being the "New York standard" for club installs (yeah, right!!). Numark has at best always been a second-rate company, maybe just fine for the bedroom but nothing that a pro installation ought to be dealing with.

I personally don't think per-channel effects sends are that big a deal...as as you point out, it's unclear what Vestax's implementation is anyway. I don't see any "return" knob on the R-1 faceplate (nor, by the way, do I see any provisioning for a microphone input, something I find extremely strange), so from the looks of it what Vestax has done is provide insert points/returns on each channel. Big deal...you can just patch nearly any effects processor between turntables/CD players and the mixers...so unless the R-1 has some really extra-special phono-preamps (which I rather doubt, based on the mediocre turntable preamps I've seen/heard/measured on other Vestax products) these "sends" have absolutely zero real value.

All this aside, for all I know the R-1 may be just great (at that price, it had damned well better be something great...to my knowledge it will be the most expensive DJ mixer on the US market by a wide margin)...but it's valuable to keep in mind a company's past performance when considering such a major purchase (especially if the thing is to be placed in a failure=death situation like the DJ booth of a club!).
 
Question for Jmark: I though that it was mostly the phono pre-amps that where responsible for "rane sound"(ie: punchy, fat)......this might not be an issue to you, mostly spinning discs, but at the moment I only spin viynl and would not want to possibly of loose part of what makes ranes soo nice.........so I guess my question is do you loose the special "rane sound" if you are using line imputs?......I trust your opinon on the EQ killer but can't help but be suspicious of pre-amps on a effects box?.......(maybe a reason to go with the xp if you play records?)...........I've only heard people spinning on 1200s with ranes
 
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put a space between your : and your punchy or else you get a :punchy
 
Housie...

I haven't done measurements comparing the turntable preamps in the EQ Killer with those in the Rane mixer...but here would be a good way to test if you're concerned (assuming you can get an EQ/killer with a return policy):

Connect one turntable directly to the Rane mixer, the other through the EQ/killer (be sure, of course, to set the appropriate line-input/turntable input switches correctly on both the EQ Kiler and the mixer!). Assuming you have identical cartridges on both tables, take two copies of the same record, play them both (taking care to match the gains...there may be a difference in the needed setting of the input-gain pots on the Rane, and even small differences in gain can fool your ears....gain setting is best done with some sort of precise metering, using a computer would be a good way). Switch back and forth. Swap the copies of the records, and later swap the cartridges (to make sure you're not hearing little differences in either of those).
 
Mark, how exactly is your rig connected? Do you run, like, CD -> EQkiller -> Rane -> amp?
Also, earlier you mentioned that the EQkiller can be split in two, right? How exactly does that work.

Oh yeah, and would you have a picture of your rig, I'd love to see it.
 
Yes, the EQ/Killers go in-line between the CD players (and turntables, when I use them) and the mixer.

The EQ/Killers each have two sets of ins/outs (as well as a send/return, which I don't usually use). There's a switch to select which of the two inputs gets EQ'ed...the other channel just passes through with no processing. It's a clever idea, and if you have only one, you can still mix two things through it and do cute creative techniques like swapping the bass from one to the other.

No pictures for now...maybe someday....
 
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