MA Lighting 🇩🇪

📍 Waldbüttelbrunn, Germany

🏢 Founded 1983

🌍 Premium Lighting Control Consoles

Overview Innovations Products Applications FAQs Resources

Company Overview

MA Lighting does not make lights; they make the brain that controls them. The German manufacturer is the creator of the GrandMA console series. To say that GrandMA is the industry standard for live event lighting control is a massive understatement; it is an absolute monopoly at the highest levels of global touring, the Olympics, the Super Bowl halftime show, and massive EDM festivals.

A modern stadium tour might have 1,500 moving lights, 40 laser systems, and a massive LED video wall. The GrandMA3 console acts as the singular command center, utilizing a highly advanced, proprietary networking protocol to send millions of parameters of data to the rig with zero latency.

MA Lighting’s true power lies in its software and user interface. Lighting programmers spend years mastering the GrandMA syntax, allowing them to rapidly build massive, sweeping lighting cues or perfectly synchronize complex, pixel-mapped video across an entire stadium with a few keystrokes on the console’s massive touchscreens.

Core Technologies

🧠

MA-Net3 Networking

A proprietary gigabit networking protocol that allows multiple massive GrandMA consoles to sync together flawlessly. If the main console loses power mid-show, the backup console takes over in a fraction of a millisecond without dropping a single light.

💻

GrandMA 3D Pre-Visualization

MA provides highly advanced, free 3D rendering software. A lighting designer can build their entire stadium rig in the software, connect their console, and program the entire concert virtually before the actual stage is even built.

🎛️

Phaser Engine

A revolutionary effects engine in the GrandMA3 software that allows programmers to create incredibly complex, multi-step movements and color chases (Phasers) using a highly intuitive visual timeline, rather than typing complex mathematical code.

Featured Solutions

GrandMA3 Full-Size

The flagship, massive lighting desk found at the front-of-house of every major stadium tour. It features dual massive multi-touch screens, motorized faders, and the processing power to control up to 250,000 lighting parameters.

GrandMA3 onPC Command Wing

A highly portable hardware wing that connects via USB to a laptop running the GrandMA3 software, giving smaller tours and club designers access to the exact same software engine at a fraction of the cost.

MA NPU (Network Processing Unit)

Massive rack-mounted computers that sit backstage. They offload the heavy mathematical calculations from the main console, allowing the system to scale infinitely to control hundreds of thousands of lights.

Ideal Industry Deployments

🏟️ Super Bowl & Olympic Ceremonies

🎪 Massive EDM Festivals (Tomorrowland)

📺 Live Broadcast & Award Shows

🎭 Complex Theatrical Automations

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the GrandMA console so universally used?

It comes down to extreme reliability and the specific programming language. MA developed a command-line syntax (the way you type commands into the board) that is incredibly fast and logical for large-scale rigs. Because every top-tier programmer knows this language, rental houses are forced to stock MA to satisfy rider demands.

What is an MA NPU and why is it needed?

A single moving light might require 40 ‘parameters’ of data (pan, tilt, color, zoom, etc.). If you have 1,000 lights, that’s 40,000 parameters updating 60 times a second. An NPU (Network Processing Unit) is a dedicated supercomputer that crunches the math backstage, so the console at the front of the house doesn’t crash under the load.

Can I learn GrandMA without buying a $50,000 console?

Yes! MA Lighting offers the GrandMA3 onPC software and their full 3D visualizer completely free to download. Anyone can learn the complex programming syntax on their home computer, though you must buy MA hardware (like a Command Wing or node) to actually output the signal to real lights.