Daniel Hertz Maria 350 integrated amplifier
Mark Levinson has sold his name more than once so in the last few decades has created other brands for his creations, Cello and Red Rose come to mind, and now we have Daniel Hertz which is apparently a family name. The Daniel Hertz Maria 350 integrated amplifier is unlike anything he has designed in the past, it’s a Class D, has an acrylic chassis and will accept signal from a Bluetooth or Airplay device. The first two are not so radical in the world of high end audio albeit acrylic casework is still uncommon, but the combination of wireless functionality with the absence of remote control is unusual.
There are two Daniel Hertz Maria amplifiers, the two channel Maria 350 and the four channel Maria 800 which has an onboard crossover so that it can be used to drive matching Daniel Hertz loudspeakers actively. That model with its extra features and power comes in at nearly three times the price of the stereo model. There are several Daniel Hertz loudspeakers that are designed for the Maria amps and sold with them, with two models dedicated to the Maria 800. Both amplifiers incorporate technology which according to Levinson is the key to unlocking the potential of digital audio. He is of the opinion that not only is digital audio not as good as analogue but that it is inherently bad for human health, that it makes us unwell and undermines all the benefits of listening to music. He’s clearly not a fan.
Levinson has been measuring human responses to digital and analogue audio and has come to the conclusion that the former produces stress, and that stress undermines the emotional connection that music can bring. The theory behind it is that the brain likes continuous waveforms of the sort that are found in natural sounds and those reproduced using analogue technology, as opposed to the sampled variety used in digital audio. Having identified the issue he has worked with Skip Taylor to devise C Wave technology which is used in the ‘Mighty Cat’ chip within the Maria 350. So enthusiastic is Levinson about this technology that C Wave has been patented in the US as a means of making digital audio better for health. It’s worth mentioning that the Mighty Cat chip does not provide amplification with Maria, that is achieved with separate output modules.
Another facet of the Mighty Cat chip is that it can be programmed to work with specific speakers in specific rooms, it offers programmable equalisation that can be custom tuned by Daniel Hertz to the end user’s preferences. This works by speaking to a Daniel Hertz engineers over a Teams video link who then create a custom profile in software that can be uploaded to the chip on the Maria 350 using a suitably equipped Windows PC. The UK distributor has just such a computer available for customers to use in this way.
The Maria 350 has digital and analogue inputs but both varieties are given the C Wave treatment, the three analogue inputs are single ended and have metal caps when supplied, presumably to keep RFI/EMI out of the amplifier. The digital inputs extend to coaxial, USB and optical albeit the latter is marked DSP for some reason. The wireless side includes Airplay and Bluetooth which on the sample reviewed could not be switched off, this however is due to change and may already have been implemented by the time you read this. The loudspeaker cable connections are very unusual and consist of brass plates which will take bare wire or spades only, with nylon fasteners to tighten them down. Next to these is a round device that I presumed to be a wi-fi antenna of sorts but which turns out to be a tool for tightening the cable clamps, a necessary one too as they are inclined to get loose if not sufficiently tight.
Being made of Waveglas acrylic and not having a power transformer onboard the Maria 350 is a fairly lightweight amplifier which is a boon to reviewers, and given the benefits that non metal casework generally brings to audio electronics should assist sound quality as well. The controls are chrome finished and one of the two smaller ‘buttons’ on the front of the Maria 350 is actually a cap over a quarter inch headphone jack that accesses a ‘separately tunable’ headphone amplifier. It offers the same type of tuning as is available for the speaker outputs and programmed in the same way.
The input and volume controls are beautifully executed but the absence of remote control is a shock to the system, especially with an amp that’s intended for use with streaming sources where level can vary significantly from track to track. But I guess it’s good to combat ones couch potato tendencies. The fact that Maria 350 has a rotary encoder volume control does take a bit of getting used to though, knowing what level it’s set at and how many turns are required to find the desired volume requires some familiarisation.
Sound quality
But it’s worth getting a handle on because this is a very nice amplifier that will drive all manner of loudspeakers with apparent ease, the figure in the name Maria 350 is its power output in Watts and that jumps to 500W when the impedance is halved. It may be light but it’s no lightweight. I was surprised at the quality of timing it managed to extract from Bowers & Wilkins 802s which are not an easy load, and this was combined with a silky smoothness of presentation that is reminiscent of Japanese amplifiers, and a grip and precision more typical of European designs. It made the music compelling regardless of whether it was by Ike White of John Martyn, the latter’s Head and Heart from his BBC Sessions release was as natural as you like. Spencer the Rover, which is a highlight on this album was very powerful too, even at low volume, which suggests that Maria 350 knows a thing or two about dynamics.
This amp has the nimbleness of a single ended triode tube amp combined with the sort of power that 350W can deliver, there is a weightless immediacy that is devoid of the thickness found with Class AB designs. This is not uncommon with Class D when it’s done well but it has to be done really well to avoid a sense of hollowness, of the music lacking solidity and presence, that there’s none of that with the Maria 350 is very appealing. These results were achieved with the analogue output of a Naim NSS 333 streamer, switching to the USB input with a Network Acoustics tweaked Lumin U2 Mini streamer resulted in a bigger, brighter and more open sound that made me want to connect the two with AES/EBU via XLR as that would have smoothed things a little. That said Keith Jarrett’s Meaning of the Blues (Standards Volume 1) was pretty sublime with excellent transparency, it was easy to hear what all three musicians were contributing as well as the pianist’s mumblings!
Julian Lage’s 76 is a modern recording that is replete with detail and it felt like I could hear right into it with this DAC/amplifier, there is so much going on and it’s delivered with incredible immediacy and no glare or grain. Lizz Wright’s vocal on Sparrow (Shadow) was huge, powerful and yet natural. I had the opportunity to contrast the USB performance with another amplifier of similar price and feature count, and this did the Maria 350 plenty of favours. Essentially it sounded relaxed with a great sense of timing which left the other amp seeming overly dramatic and unnatural by comparison.
Maria 350 is also very good at resolving differences between recordings, a sure sign of high resolution. Given the wide range of variables present when making and engineering a recording no two should sound exactly alike, so an amplifier that exposes greater differences is truer to the source than one that is less revealing; it has higher fidelity. The recent Liv Andrea Hauge Trio release Ville Blomster comes through with a very distinctive acoustic character via the Daniel Hertz amp, and it sounds sublime enough to close your eyes and go with the inspiring flow of their playing. That is what I look for in any component and those that can do it with digital are not common.
I tried some other speakers to see how Maria 350 would cope with different loads, the Oephi Immanence 2.5 worked well with excellent timing and superb resolution of dynamic nuances, but the balance was a little on the lively side for my tastes. Vivid’s Kaya S12 stand mounts were a better match and delivered superb dynamic tension, loads of space and enjoyed the amplifier’s excellent sense of pace which made for very engaging music. Finally I brought in the PMC twenty5.26is that are the mainstay of my speaker collection, these proved to be a great match with a natural tonal balance and a very relaxed presentation that made all manner of music interesting and engaging. This proved to be the case with both analogue and digital sources.
Conclusion
Whether the Daniel Hertz Maria 350 will prove to be the answer to the world’s digital audio prayers remains to be seen but it certainly makes music from digital sources compelling and relaxing. It’s that second quality that Mark Levinson is most concerned about and rightly so, music can be exciting or soothing but cannot reach its zenith if it has any typically digital characteristics. The Maria 350 works beautifully with all manner of music and a wide variety of loudspeakers, if it had a remote control I would be tempted.