Different price classes - Yamaha A-S1200 costs roughly 1.8x what Audiolab 8300A 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 | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 75W against 90W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output increases strongly (115W and 150W). |
| Noise floor | B | Yamaha A-S1200 is the quieter design on paper - 110dB against 107dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Yamaha A-S1200 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 4. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Shelf space | depends | Audiolab 8300A takes up about 31% less shelf area (1465cm² against 2123cm²), and it is 158mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Audiolab 8300A costs less - $1,699 against $3,000 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Audiolab 8300A is the cheaper watt - about $23 per watt against $33. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Audiolab 8300A B Yamaha A-S1200
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-S1200 is ahead, but on only 1 of the measured areas, and it costs about 77% more. That is a lot of money for a narrow margin - Audiolab 8300A is the sensible buy unless a specific feature above decides it for you. Think about the whole system: the roughly $1,301 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.