One is a streaming all-in-one and the other is an amplifier. Judge them on how many boxes you want and what you already own, not on the spec sheet alone.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | Audiolab 8300A has more power - 75W against 50W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.8dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Audiolab 8300A the better fit for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room, and Audiolab Omnia for desk or near-field listening and a small room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output increases strongly (115W and 75W). |
| Noise floor | A | Audiolab 8300A is the quieter design on paper - 107dB against 76dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Audiolab Omnia has a DAC on board; the other needs an external one, which is another box, another power lead and another purchase. |
| Streaming | B | Only Audiolab Omnia has Roon and DTS Play-Fi. |
| Analogue inputs | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (4). |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Built-in sources | depends | Audiolab Omnia has a CD player built in. That is one less box if you still play discs or listen to radio, and dead weight if you do not. |
| Price | A | Audiolab 8300A costs less - $1,699 against $2,300 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Audiolab 8300A is the cheaper watt - about $23 per watt against $46. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Audiolab 8300A B Audiolab Omnia
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?
Audiolab 8300A has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. If you already own a DAC or a streamer, the built-in one is money you are paying twice for, and Audiolab 8300A becomes the more rational buy. Think about the whole system: the roughly $601 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.