Martin Mac Ultra Performance and Wash Launched

Martin Professional has announced it's newest top of the line LED automated fixtures poised to be the new workhorse standard of the industry.  The Mac Ultra Performance and Mac Ultra Wash feature Martin's proprietary 1150W LED engines that output and incredible 45,600 lumens for the Performance and a staggering 63,500 lumens for the Wash.  At a native 6000K color temperature, the engines feature higher red content which deliver better skin tones.  Refresh rate is set at 3000Hz making the engine flicker free and broadcast ready.  The LED engine is actually a 1680W LED array that is under driven to enhance the life expectancy and output longevity.  In fact, the Ultra line is capable of 90% output at up to 20,000 hours of use.  This means that output matching across fixtures of different ages becomes a non-issue.  

The optics for the Ultra Performance get you a 1:7 zoom 7.7-53 degrees, and for the Ultra Wash you get a 1:10 zoom 5-47 degrees.  Front elements come in a 160mm and 220mm respectively giving the fat beam looks designers like to see.  In addition, the Mac Ultra line has one the most efficient optics train in the industry that maintains 100% of the output from full wide to down to 10 degrees. Everyone likes to brag about peak lumen output, but can they maintain it throughout the zoom range?  The Mac Ultra can, and does.  

Fully feature packed the Ultra Performance and Wash get CMY color mixing, color temperature control from 6000K to 2850k, as well as a 6 color wheel complete with a spectral filter to further enhance light output quality.   Iris and Frost are included for both units, the Ultra Performance also gets a 4 facet prism, an indexing and variable angel animation wheel, and two 5 place rotating gobo wheels.  An option heavy frost filter is included with the fixture as well.  

But wait, there's more!  Martin is perhaps proudest of the the new framing module for the Ultra Performance.  This new framing system is designed with blades on two planes, which keep cuts in closer focus and result in clean beam shaping.  Blades can swipe clear across the entire optic train from any direction and are tilted from their ends.  These tilting shutter blades offer +-30 degrees resulting in higher outputs and also all the blades can be "pre-tilted" before they enter the field.  The module can rotate 83 degrees in either direction.  Speed of the framing system is truly impressive, and will no doubt be loved by designers across the board. 

Mac Ultra brings a new level of sound suppression and is best in class in this arena.  Martin has pioneered ducted air flow management as seen in the Mac Viper, which was the quietest of the class at the time.  The Mac Encore again outperformed the competition and cemented it's position as a broadcast studio favorite due it is super quiet air flow.  The Mac Ultra only produces 2dB more than the Encore which is less than half the wattage.  You would be hard pressed to hear fan noise even standing right next to a running Mac Ultra unit.  

A concern with all fixtures is size and weight.  It's been a challenge to create LED fixtures that out perform the arc units they replace and keep their size and weight in a comparable range.  The Mac Ultra Performance comes in at 97lbs (44kg) and the Mac Ultra Wash is 86lbs (39kg).   If we are comparing this to the Mac Viper Performance, which comes in at 83.6lbs (37.9kg), and Mac Viper Wash at 72.8lbs (33kg), we may be tempted to throw our arms in the air.  However, the new Mac Ultra Performance and Ultra Wash offer nearly double the output of both of the Vipers they replace with an output 26,000 lumens and 33,000 lumens respectively, at only a 12-14% increase in weight.  Add to that the reliability and advantages of an LED source, and that small weight increase becomes well worth it.