RANE

RANE Corporation, a privately held company, was founded and incorporated in 1981 in Washington State. Previously, the owners worked together in management positions at Phase Linear Corporation, a high-end consumer electronics company. Utilizing this background, they combined over 40 years of audio experience to create RANE Corporation. Based on their professional experience, the owners became separate department heads, creating an unusually strong structure, since all department heads had a unique owner’s perspective in making it succeed.

RANE started out with four products aimed at small bands, designed to make their live performances better. With these products, RANE quickly established a new price-point for performance, quality and reliability. RANE products were priced below the top high-end equipment yet outperformed and outlasted them but were still priced significantly above the low-end products, thus creating a new middle ground. A noteworthy testament to RANE’s design significance and reliability reputation, is that in their first two years of production, RANE designed and shipped eight new products.

After creating many more innovative DJ products following the MP24, RANE was attending an AES (Audio Engineering Society) convention in New York City in 1998. Four extremely talented turntablists introduced them to their art form and invited a couple of RANE guys to join them in their back yard for some tutoring. It was an eye-opening experience for a couple of Joes from the sticks of Mukilteo. They felt privileged to be invited, not only to join in the turntablism fun, but also to be the company they selected to build their dream mixer. They knew RANE’s reputation in the club market and they understood RANE’s design philosophy.

The RANE product designers joined a handful of the city’s top scratch performers where they literally spread their ideas on the floor of Wiz’s apartment in Spanish Harlem and went to work. Thus, began the anatomy of the TTM 54 Performance mixer. For three days, they enjoyed the company of Rolly Roll, Development, DJ Big Wiz, Sugarcuts, Marz1 and Peter Parker. They watched performances by DJ Quest, The Crash Dummies, The X-Men and many more. During their stay, they defined every detail of the mixer: features, control locations, knob size and feel, as well as fader feel and much more. Collectively, they created RANE’s first hip-hop battle mixer, which became one of the most successful products in RANE’s history.