Martin Professional 🇩🇰

📍 Aarhus, Denmark

🏢 Founded 1987

🌍 Global Touring Moving Heads & Atmospheric FX

Overview Innovations Products Applications FAQs Resources

Company Overview

Martin Professional (now the crown jewel lighting division of Harman / Samsung) is arguably the most famous and widely specified entertainment lighting manufacturer in history. Founded in Denmark, Martin effectively wrote the rulebook for the modern moving head with the legendary MAC 2000, a fixture that absolutely dominated global touring, television, and Broadway for over a decade.

Today, Martin remains at the absolute pinnacle of the industry. Their MAC series (specifically the MAC Viper and MAC Aura) are standard vocabulary for any lighting designer. If a technical rider for a massive stadium tour or EDM festival is issued, it will almost certainly specify Martin fixtures due to their legendary reliability, flawless optical color mixing, and immense global rental availability.

Beyond fixtures, Martin is the undisputed king of atmospheric effects. Their JEM smoke and haze machines are the industry standard, providing the perfect, optically translucent mist required to make massive laser and beam shows actually visible in the air.

Core Technologies

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Aura ‘Eye-Candy’ Backlight

Martin invented the dual-layer LED wash. The MAC Aura features a massive main beam of color, but also includes a secondary LED engine that illuminates the lens itself, creating a stunning, glowing ‘aura’ effect for the camera.

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Animotion FX System

Advanced internal software in their modern LED fixtures that allows the individual pixels of a wash light to instantly generate complex 3D animations, spirals, and chases without requiring a massive media server.

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JEM Heavy-Duty Atmospherics

Martin engineered the most reliable thermal blocks in the fog industry. Their haze machines can run continuously for 24 hours a day at massive festivals without clogging or spitting hot fluid onto the stage.

Featured Solutions

MAC Viper XIP

The modern evolution of the greatest moving head ever made. It integrates a massive white LED engine with IP54 weatherproofing, allowing the fixture to be used outdoors in the rain without the heavy weight of traditional IP65 fixtures.

MAC Aura PXL

The industry standard LED wash light. It provides a massive, incredibly bright wash of color, while every single pixel on the face can be individually mapped for stunning visual camera effects.

JEM Hazer Pro

The absolute backbone of concert lighting. It generates a perfectly even, translucent mist that hangs in the air, giving moving light beams a 3D physical presence without choking the singer on stage.

Ideal Industry Deployments

🏟️ A-List Global Stadium Tours

🎭 Broadway & Theatrical Run

📺 Global Broadcast Events

💨 Atmospheric Stage Haze

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the MAC Aura so famous?

Before the Aura, an LED wash light looked ugly on camera—just a cluster of harsh, individual dots. Martin invented a dual-engine system that illuminated the frosted lens from behind. This made the face of the fixture look like a beautiful, glowing, single source of light, fundamentally changing how lighting looks on television.

What is the difference between Smoke and Haze?

Smoke (or fog) is thick, opaque, and used as a special effect to obscure the stage. Haze (which Martin’s JEM line excels at) is practically invisible to the naked eye. It simply hangs a fine particulate in the air so that when a light beam cuts through the stage, you can see the 3D shaft of light.

Is Martin still an independent company?

No, Martin was acquired by Harman International in 2013, which was subsequently acquired by Samsung. This gives Martin incredible R&D funding and global distribution, sharing a parent company with audio giants like JBL and Crown.