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 | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 100W against 100W 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 (155W and 160W). |
| Noise floor | B | Audiolab 9000A is the quieter design on paper - 110dB against 91dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Cambridge EXA100 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only Cambridge EXA100 has Roon. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Cambridge EXA100 takes more analogue sources - 5 against 3. |
| Phono stage | depends | Audiolab 9000A has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Cambridge EXA100 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 9000A 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 | A | Cambridge EXA100 costs less - $2,199 against $2,999 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Cambridge EXA100 is the cheaper watt - about $22 per watt against $30. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Cambridge EXA100 B Audiolab 9000A
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?
Cambridge EXA100 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 play records, Audiolab 9000A saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. Think about the whole system: the roughly $800 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.