Different price classes - Cambridge Audio CXA61 costs roughly 2.2x what Denon PMA-600NE 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 | A | Cambridge Audio CXA61 has more power - 60W against 45W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.2dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (105dB vs 105dB). |
| 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 | Denon PMA-600NE 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 | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Price | B | Denon PMA-600NE costs less - $499 against $1,099 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Denon PMA-600NE is the cheaper watt - about $11 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 Cambridge Audio CXA61 B Denon PMA-600NE
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, Denon PMA-600NE costs about 55% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. If you play records, Denon PMA-600NE saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. Think about the whole system: the roughly $600 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.