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 - 76W against 80W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | Musical Fidelity M2si holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 137W, where the other increases strongly. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | B | Cambridge Audio CXA81 is the quieter design on paper - 105dB against 96dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Cambridge Audio CXA81 has a DAC on board; the other needs an external one, which is another box, another power lead and another purchase. |
| Analogue inputs | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (5). |
| Phono stage | depends | Musical Fidelity M2si has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Cambridge Audio CXA81 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. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Cambridge Audio CXA81 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Price | A | Musical Fidelity M2si costs less - $1,299 against $1,499 at list. |
A Musical Fidelity M2si B Cambridge Audio CXA81
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 CXA81 measures better, Musical Fidelity M2si costs about 13% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - Musical Fidelity M2si is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. If you play records, Musical Fidelity M2si 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.