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 | A | LEAK Stereo 230 has more power - 75W against 50W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.8dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate LEAK Stereo 230 the better fit for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room, and Audiolab 6000A Play for desk or near-field listening and a small room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output increases strongly (115W and 75W). |
| Noise floor | A | LEAK Stereo 230 is the quieter design on paper - 109dB against 76dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. LEAK Stereo 230 goes higher - 768kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only Audiolab 6000A Play has DTS Play-Fi. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Audiolab 6000A Play takes more analogue sources - 4 against 2. |
| Room to grow | B | Only Audiolab 6000A Play 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 | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | A | LEAK Stereo 230 is the cheaper watt - about $23 per watt against $34. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A LEAK Stereo 230 B Audiolab 6000A Play
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?
LEAK Stereo 230 has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the interface feels 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.