BUSINESS: COMPANY PROFILE
Rock & roll royalty
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Martin Audio founder Dave Martin at the R&D bench
Caroline Moss looks back over the 50 years since Martin Audio’s visionary founder brought the brand into existence, ushering in half a century of talent and dedication SEVERAL NOTABLE BRITISH BRANDS HAVE SHAPED THE international touring scene by the sheer passion and drive of their founders, but Martin Audio surely leads the way. The company’s history spans the early days of touring as it pioneered groundbreaking developments in entertainment and installation technology by way of rock & roll greatness, innovative product design, tragedy, endurance and reinvention. The latest chapter in Martin Audio’s history opened in 2019 with its acquisition by the Focusrite Group, joining stablemates Focusrite, Focusrite Pro, Novation, Ampify, ADAM Audio, new baby sibling, Optimal Audio and legendary synth brand, Sequential.
Pink Floyd’s 1973 Earls Court appearance – with a 7,000W 215 system
Dave Martin proudly displays a gold disc for his services to Sade’s 1988 tour
To understand what has made Martin Audio such a revered and enduring brand, you must go back to its debut in 1971 and the seemingly simple aim of Australian sound engineer Dave Martin: to enable bands to play to larger audiences and be properly heard. But back then, that wasn’t so easy to fulfil. Just six years earlier, in 1965, the Beatles had largely stopped playing live due to poor sound quality and inability for the music to be heard over the crowd noise. Horn-loaded two-way systems were beginning to make an appearance though, and American bands were touring with systems based around RCA Shearer horns and Altec Lansing components. Due to the prohibitive cost of shipping these back to the US, bands would often sell them off to UK rental companies. Enter Martin, who was working at one such company, IES. But the boxes were heavy, and he started work on something a little more transportable, coming up with the 215 bass horn prototype which was used with Vitavox horn flares and JBL 2482 compression drivers for the midrange and high frequencies. In 1973 Pink Floyd used a large version of this system for an Earls Court concert, comprising ground-stacked speakers on the stage and four flown stacks to project to the back. This was one of the first major instances of what became the Martin Audio ethos: to get the best-quality sound to as much of the audience as possible. But the 215 was cumbersome and heavy, so the ever-enterprising Martin
sawed it in half to develop the 115. Following a shootout at the Roundhouse in Camden, North London, systems based on the 115 bass horn were installed in all the Rank nightclub chain’s major venues around London and at the Roundhouse itself. Meanwhile, an early stage monitor consisting of the 15-inch JBL E140/JBL 2301 pepper pot or potato masher acoustic lens with JBL 2420 compression driver embodied Martin’s compact, high-power approach. By 1975, Martin Audio had moved from its original premises in central London’s Covent Garden to Euston’s Stanhope Street, next door to fellow touring pioneer, mixing console manufacturer Midas. This association supplied many British tours throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s as together, the companies developed the Martin/ Midas dedicated system, comprising a four-way Martin Audio speaker system, Midas console with system crossovers and Midas power amp, flightcased and ready to go. Next came a key product in the company’s history: the legendary “Philishave” MH212 midrange horn. Dave Martin had discovered that two-inch compression drivers couldn’t provide sufficient power, warmth and impact through the critical lower midrange region, and designed this dual 12-inch horn-loaded cabinet to solve the problem. This came to define the brand’s sound, running from 250Hz to 1.5kHz, with an HF2M high-frequency horn added for 1.5kHz upwards. “It was the compression, the force and the impact of the sound, not just the loudness,” remembers Cooper Cannady of North Carolina’s RMB audio production house, a longterm Martin Audio client. “I’ve never heard vocals, a guitar or drums sound like that. At 150 feet you could feel the snare drum slap you in the face and feel it on your skin.” The MH212’s first major tour was Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, deploying what went on to be a popular combination in the US: 48 dual 15-inch bass bins, 36 Philishaves and 48 Emilar horns and drivers. The system, together with Midas amps, BSS MCS200 crossovers, Klark Teknik DN27 graphic EQs and custom Midas consoles, was purchased by the band for the tour and subsequently bought by a conglomerate of technicians and roadies who formed Delicate Productions, a long-term associate of Martin Audio. And Dave Martin himself was presented with a gold disc for his services to the Supertramp tour. Back in the UK, Keith Davis bought his first Martin Audio system for PASE hire in Yorkshire in 1979 before setting
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