Different price classes - Arcam SA10 costs roughly 1.6x what Yamaha A-S501 does. Expect it to lead on paper; the question is whether you will hear the difference through the speakers you own.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | B | Yamaha A-S501 has more power - 85W against 50W into 8 ohms. That is about 2.3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Arcam SA10 the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and Yamaha A-S501 for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Noise floor | A | Arcam SA10 is the quieter design on paper - 106dB against 99dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Yamaha A-S501 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 4. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Price | B | Yamaha A-S501 costs less - $550 against $880 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Yamaha A-S501 is the cheaper watt - about $6 per watt against $18. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Arcam SA10 B Yamaha A-S501
depends neither is better in the abstract - it turns on your room, your system or how you will use them. Only specs published for both amplifiers are judged; anything missing on either side is left out rather than guessed.
Which should you choose?
Yamaha A-S501 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Arcam SA10 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. Start with the room. In a large or open-plan room, or with speakers that are hard to drive - low sensitivity, or an impedance that dips - Yamaha A-S501 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 50 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 35 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Yamaha A-S501 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. Think about the whole system: the roughly $330 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, which does more for the sound than the difference between two competent amplifiers.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the controls feel day to day, and what the app is like to live with - which is where most all-in-one amplifiers are actually won or lost. Power figures are the manufacturers' own and are not measured to a common standard, so treat small differences as noise. If you can hear both, that will tell you more than any row above.