i've got a 54 at home and i'm satisfied with the x-fader on my rane, but the 07 Pro's crossfader does have a somewhat better cut in time than the Rane faders. I've literally opened my 54 crossfader up to clean it and also to satisfy my curiousity. I've seen pictures of a Vestax Pro series xfader taken apart and in my opinion Rane's xfader is built a lot tougher.

Rane's customer service is awesome. I had a question I sent to their tech support and got a very helpful reply within 30 minutes. Faders are smooth, nice cut too.
- tasmanian bushman

Rane's crossfader cuttting time is more sharper than Vestax Faders.
- Rugged One

Well, I ended up buying the 54i a few days ago, and I am VERY happy with it. I read what
you all had to say and called up K & K Sound. The dj specialist there owned an old 54 and a Vestax 07, and he said that the Rane was better. He said that the Rane fader would feel slightly different from my 06 Pro, but that the Rane faders were still very smooth and cut very sharp. Also, he said that when he records in the studio, he always uses the Rane because the Vestax 07 Pro had a slight hiss in the output that the Rane didn't (I think he called it peak noise). He also said that the eq on the Rane was better (down to -40 on the bass). I went down and checked it out (especially the faders) and bought it.
I have to say that after a few days of messing around with it, the Rane mixer is very nice. The crossfader felt funny at first (especially when crab scratching) because the knob is rounded at the top, but now I prefer the feel of the Rane knobs over the Vestax ones. To me, the Rane crossfader feels as smooth and cuts as sharp as my 06, and the Rane volume faders sound far superior when I do echo fades.

The only Rane features that took some serious adjusting to is the location of the headphone level, the pan, and the master level. My 06 Pro was more intuitive because the pan was a fader and located with the headphone level down by where you'd naturally reach for it on the mixer. However, on the Rane, it seems like the headphone level should be where the master level is and vice versa. Also, the pan on the Rane is a knob instead of fader which takes some getting used to if you are used to the ease of the fader pan on Vestax mixers. However, it didn't take me too long to adjust to how to cue and pan on the Rane, so it's not that big of a deal.

The Master/Cue feature is a huge improvement over my 06 because now I don't have to hook the mixer up to my receiver to practice through headphones late at night. However, the 07 would have had the same thing, so I guess I would have had that feature either way.

Nobody talks about how great the balance controls are for the Rane. They are like stiff faders, so that you can do some cool pan effects on your scratches. I would prefer the Rane's balance controls over the ISP 07's quadrophonic joystick feature because I'll more likely be in situations that don't have a quadrophonic stereo set up.

Anyway, I highly recommend the Rane 54i to anybody looking for a really good mixer. Also I recommend that if you do get a Rane mixer, then you should read the manual because it not only tells you stuff to help you get more out the mixer's performance, but it is also pretty funny. I didn't expect that.

-shephrd