Rane System One Review

What if you could ditch the laptop entirely, but still keep the feel of real turntables? That’s the big promise behind the Rane System One, the world’s first standalone DJ system with motorised platters. 

Standalone all-in-one systems have come a long way in recent years, making laptop-free DJing a realistic option for more people than ever. But for scratch DJs and turntablists, these systems still don’t give you the feel of proper turntables.

That’s the gap Rane are trying to fill here. The System One takes the motorised platter feel Rane are already known for and combines it with a fully standalone workflow and a fair few fun tricks.

That all sounds great, but how well does that translate into the real world? Let’s find out.

Video Review

Engine DJ Comes to RANE

Engine DJ already powers standalone systems from Denon DJ and Numark, but this is the first time it’s been built into a RANE product.

You can play music directly from:

• USB-A
• USB-C
• SD card
• An internal 2.5-inch SATA drive

It’s also got built-in Wi-Fi, which lets you stream directly on the unit using Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, Beatport, Beatsource, TIDAL, SoundCloud Go+ and Dropbox.

A nice plus is that, if you’re coming from Serato, Traktor or Rekordbox, you don’t need to rebuild your library. You can just import your existing collection into Engine DJ on a computer, export it to a drive with all the cue points and metadata intact, all ready to go on your System One.

You can also do all your library management right there on the unit as well as on your computer, including browsing playlists, searching your collection, creating new playlists and finding matching or related tracks without leaving the system. A handy new feature is the Playlist Bank buttons, which let you save key playlists and jump back to them instantly, even when switching between different sources.

Motorised Platters

The standout feature on the System One that really sets it apart from other standalone DJ systems is the motorised platters. These are just like the ones you get on other Rane gear like the Rane One, so if you’ve used those, you’ll feel at home. 

Each deck uses a 7.2-inch motorised platter with a quick-release acrylic disc and slipmat underneath. There’s also a marker ring, which makes things like scratching and beat juggling easy to read.

RANE also lets you dial in how the platters behave. You can switch between a vinyl-style windup and an instant start, adjust the motor torque, switch between 33 and 45 RPM modes, and enable turntable mode in the settings, all of which is great for really dialling in the perfect feel. 

Standalone Stems

One thing that gives the System One the edge on a lot of standalones like the XDJ-AZ is that it’s got standalone stems functionality. We’ve seen this before on the Denon Prime 4+, which also uses Engine, but it’s great that systems are starting to adopt it more. 

However, stems work a little differently than with laptop-based setups. Tracks need to be analysed for stems in the Engine DJ desktop software before you export them onto a drive. That means you can’t analyse anything and split it directly on the System One.

Once analysed, these tracks are grouped into a dedicated stems playlist. You can also see which tracks in your regular playlists have been processed, making it easy to know what’s available mid-set.

You get three main ways to work with stems:

• Stem Level mode, where the EQ knobs control drums, bass, melody and vocals
• Instant Acapella and Instrumental buttons for quick isolation, with shift adding echo-out behaviour
• Stems pad mode, which gives on and off control for each stem element and supports combinations

Overall, the stems don’t sound too bad. They’re not the best on the market, but for a fully standalone system, the results are usable if you plan ahead.

Performance Tools

The SYSTEM ONE keeps its performance tools very familiar, especially if you’ve used other RANE or Serato-style layouts before. Nothing here feels unusual or experimental, which is very much the point.

Each deck includes nice and responsive performance pads, which work in the following modes:

• Hot Cues, with shift used to delete
• Roll, with standard musical divisions and alternative timings on the secondary layer
• Sampler, with a dedicated sampler level control on the front of the unit
• Slicer, for quick rhythmic cuts

Looping is easy to get to and doesn’t rely on the screen. Tapping Roll mode twice switches the pads into loop mode, where you can set and save loops directly, with shift used to clear them. You also get dedicated loop controls for auto loops, plus half and double loop length buttons, so basic looping stays quick and hands-on.

The sampler is more flexible than it first appears. You can load individual samples or even full tracks directly from the browser, then choose which sample slot to replace. That makes it practical to manage on the fly rather than feeling like something you’d only set up in advance.

Overall, the performance tools cover exactly what you’d expect and behave how you want them to, without trying to be a headline feature of the system.

Effects

As we’ve come to expect on Rane units, effects are a big part of the System One and again, the way they work is a bit different to a lot of other controllers. You’ve got three different ways of applying effects to your tracks. 

At the top are Sweep FX, which work a bit like Sound Colour FX on AlphaTheta units. By default, these act as filters, but holding the button lets you switch to options like noise, wash and dub-style echoes.

Below that is the main FX section, with six hardware buttons for effects such as echo, reverb, pitch down, rise and echo out. Even though effects are printed on the unit, you can swap them out by holding a button and choosing something else. Each effect includes adjustable parameters like beat division, frequency and feedback.

You also get fader FX, which apply effects as you move the channel faders or crossfader. These include echo outs and stutter-style effects, with adjustable behaviour.

Finally, the most fun and unique one is the Touch FX, which you use on the screen as an XY pad. You can latch them on or use them momentarily, adjust parameters like resonance and echo amount, and assign them to a deck or the master. 

Connectivity

The System One gives you all the connections and options you’ll want and need as a professional event DJ.

You can record sets directly to a USB drive from the unit, which makes capturing mixes quick and straightforward.

On the output side, you get XLR and RCA main outputs, along with a dedicated booth output that includes its own EQ. Connections on the back include:

• XLR and RCA main outputs
• Booth output with EQ
• RCA aux input
• Two combo XLR microphone inputs

Bluetooth audio is built in as well, with a front-panel level control and a switch to flip between Bluetooth and aux input. That’ll come in handy for event DJs who need a bonus source or a way to take last-minute requests off your phone. 

One nice touch is how flexible the inputs are per channel. You can run one side on internal Engine DJ and the other on laptop software, which makes back-to-back sets much easier when DJs want to work differently. Firmware updates also happen directly over Wi-Fi, so keeping the system up to date doesn’t mean plugging it into a computer.

Final Thoughts

The Rane System One sits in an interesting place in an increasingly busy all-in-one market. It’s managed to carve out a real niche as the only motorised platter standalone, so it will be an easy pick for open-format and scratching DJs looking for a streamlined, laptop-free solution.

There are drawbacks, however, that keep this from being the perfect all-in-one. The fact that it’s only two-channels might be limiting for some, and the fact that you’ve got to preprepare stems is disappointing, although still a step up from stemless controllers. 

Price-wise, at £2,199/$2,499/€/$2,499, the System One sits between the XDJ-RX3 and XDJ-AZ and right at the top end of RANE’s range, and in terms of quality, it feels like it. It’s a little unrealistic to directly compare it to those two units, however, as the vinyl-style playback on this makes it a whole different beast.

Overall then, this is a fantastic bit of kit and no doubt the sort of thing open format event DJs have been dreaming of for years.