These are not the same size of amplifier: Yamaha A-S801 has roughly 2.5x the power of ELAC DS-A101-G. That is about 4dB, so it is a question of room size and how hard your speakers are to drive, not of one being the better amplifier.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | B | Yamaha A-S801 has more power - 100W against 40W into 8 ohms. That is about 4dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate ELAC DS-A101-G the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and Yamaha A-S801 for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Speaker load rating | A | ELAC DS-A101-G is rated down to 2 ohms against 4, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (101dB vs 99dB). |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Yamaha A-S801 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only ELAC DS-A101-G has Roon. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Yamaha A-S801 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | Yamaha A-S801 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and ELAC DS-A101-G 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. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Yamaha A-S801 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Shelf space | depends | ELAC DS-A101-G takes up about 58% less shelf area (746cm² against 1792cm²), and it is 65mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | ELAC DS-A101-G costs less - $850 against $900 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Yamaha A-S801 is the cheaper watt - about $9 per watt against $21. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A ELAC DS-A101-G B Yamaha A-S801
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-S801 leads across most of the measured areas for a fairly modest premium, so it is the easier pick if the budget stretches. ELAC DS-A101-G is the one to take if it does not. Start with the room. In a large or open-plan room, or with speakers that are hard to drive - low sensitivity, or an impedance that dips - Yamaha A-S801 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 40 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 60 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Yamaha A-S801 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Yamaha A-S801 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.