No single best amplifier here. What decides it is what you have to drive, what you need to plug in, and how much of the system you want in one box.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 60W against 50W 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 (90W and 75W). |
| Noise floor | A | Cambridge Audio CXA61 is the quieter design on paper - 105dB against 76dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Cambridge Audio CXA61 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Cambridge Audio CXA61 takes more analogue sources - 5 against 4. |
| Phono stage | depends | Audiolab 6000A has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Cambridge Audio CXA61 does not. Decisive if you own a turntable, completely irrelevant if you do not - and an outboard phono stage is easy to add later either way. |
| Room to grow | B | Only Audiolab 6000A offers a pre-out/main-in loop - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Price | B | Audiolab 6000A costs less - $899 against $1,099 at list. |
A Cambridge Audio CXA61 B Audiolab 6000A
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?
The usual trade-off: Cambridge Audio CXA61 measures better, Audiolab 6000A costs about 18% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. If you play records, Audiolab 6000A saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely.
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.