I have the pleasure of reviewing a variety of equipment for Church Production Magazine (CPM)—probably the most fun category of product, for me, is lighting consoles. As a former software engineer, programming lighting sequences resonates with me. So I was excited to get a chance to play with the Martin M1 console and review it for CPM. For a console packed with as many features as the M1, we'll only be able to touch on the highlights.
Right out of the box, this solidly built, tour-worthy piece of equipment inspired confidence and conveyed a clear design capable of withstanding the abuse of the road. The M1 features a control surface with 47 playback controls in four groups, and four encoder wheels for manipulating fixture parameters such as intensity, pan/tilt, etc. Twelve programmable function keys allow you to customize the control surface for quick access to virtually anything you desire, and a keypad/trackball area provides the means for entering commands.
The console also includes a touch-screen LCD display for direct access to most functions by pressing directly on the screen itself. An additional monitor can be connected via the included DVI port on the back of the console, and a USB keyboard can also be added to simplify text entry. Numerous virtual “screens” are available to choose based on your needs, and each is fully configurable. Additional blank screens are also provided for the user to create customized views into the console's operation. This is a very nice feature.
The M1 can support four universes of DMX directly, with up to 16 universes available as an add-on option. One thousand cue lists can be created, and can be run in parallel, enabling seriously complicated shows to be controlled through numerous short cue lists. Your iPhone can be used as a remote control for the console, as well, enabling easy remote focus control—no more jogging back to the console to bring up a different light at focus time.
With two of the playback control groups (one with 24 controls; the other with 10 controls) having 99 banks and 100 banks, respectively, the options for running simultaneous cues are pretty much endless. And if that isn't enough, there's also a set of playback buttons available via the touch-screen that provides even more options. Having this many cue lists and banks available would let you partition the console's playback banks into “sections” for each of your lighting volunteers, giving them each their own space to play in without affecting the other volunteers.
So, what's this system like to use?
I took the console over to the multipurpose room at Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, N.C., where they have a nice variety of lighting hardware to work with, from basic conventional fixtures, fixtures with color scrollers and moving mirrors, to LED lights and Coemar iSpot intelligent fixtures. Set up was straightforward. Reading the documentation via the built-in help system described patching well, and I was able to manually recreate the patch from the church's existing console pretty quickly. To handle the Rosco iCue fixtures, the M1 has a generic pan/tilt fixture that can be used. With the M1, you treat the scroller and the dimmer as two separate fixtures, which is a little awkward. The same goes for using the Wybron Forerunner color scroller—you patch one fixture for the dimmer, and another for the scroller, and treat them as two different fixtures.
When a fixture is selected, the LCD buttons in the keypad area light up and change their labels to indicate what groups of parameters are available to control the fixture. Selecting an iSpot Flex fixture provides buttons for intensity, pan/tilt, color, gobo, beam, and beam effects. Selecting the color button changes the encoder wheels to manipulate the cyan, magenta and yellow color blades. And something I didn't discover until late is that on the touch screen, if you select the small box where it indicates what percentage of cyan, magenta or yellow is currently set, a color picker window is displayed for easy color selection. Likewise, all parameters have this more detailed layer available. Programming cue and cue lists on the console is very straightforward, and the touch-screen improves the efficiency of using the system significantly. Editing the cues is also straightforward, as is assigning a cue list to a playback controller.
The playback controllers, mentioned earlier, include one section of 10 control groups (with 100 banks available), with each control group having go, back, fader, select, and bump buttons. The second section has 12 controls with a “go” button and a fader, and 12 controls that are just a “go” button. This section has 99 banks available.
With all these playback controls available, it occurred to me that you could approach programming your worship services in a whole new way. Instead of making one long cue list for each service, you could create numerous short cue lists for backdrop/cyc curtain looks; others of short cue lists for band/orchestra color washes; another set for vocalist looks; another for teaching and drama, and then simply mix and match on the fly for each service. The M1 would excel in this, and with all the playback methods and controls that are available, it would result in a very volunteer-friendly system that wouldn't require every volunteer to learn programming.
Another desirable feature of the M1 is the auto-mark feature, available on a per-cue list or per-cue basis. Auto-mark causes the system to look ahead in the cue list and see if there's a cue where the intensity of a fixture is going from zero to some other level while also changing other parameters like color, gobo, pan/tilt, etc. It will then change those parameters while executing an earlier cue when the fixture is still at zero intensity, so that all the other parameters are already “at their mark” when the intensity comes up. This can save a lot of programming time, and is a very volunteer-friendly feature. However, there's a catch.
If, like Colonial Baptist, you have standard fixtures with accessories attached (like a Rosco iCue moving mirror) where you have to treat the accessory as a separate fixture, the auto-mark feature will not help you with these fixtures. As the mirror “fixture” has no intensity associated with it, the console can't know when the fixture is dark, and thus can't auto-mark it. However, Martin states this limitation is being addressed in a new software release that, as of this writing, is expected in early 2011. This release will include a new fixture editor, allowing the user to construct custom fixtures that include the profiles of other standard fixtures. So, if you have a conventional fixture with a DMX-controllable iris, a color scroller, and a moving mirror, you will be able to create one fixture that contains all these parts, with each part separately addressable. This will let all users fully benefit from the auto-mark feature, and greatly simplify fixture management.
I ran into other challenges with the documentation. Several sections in the M1 manual refer to controls that do not exist on the M1—only on its larger siblings. This was a little frustrating. Martin reports that they are addressing these problems with the documentation. Martin also has some training videos available on their website that can help conquer the learning curve that all new consoles come with.
Summary
The M1 is a serious, rugged console with tons of power for running many simultaneous cue lists, and has many more features than can be described here. With the anticipated release of the new fixture editor, it will have the flexibility to fully utilize all the power designed into the system.
For a church that needs lots of playback options, this could be a great console. As with any major purchase for a control system, I suggest that you work with it at a tradeshow or arrange a loaner from your Martin Professional dealer to see if it's a good fit for your church, and more importantly, your volunteers.
