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 - 50W against 50W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | PS Audio Sprout100 holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 100W, where the other increases strongly. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | B | Denon PMA-900HNE is the quieter design on paper - 105dB against 100dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. PS Audio Sprout100 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | B | Only Denon PMA-900HNE has AirPlay 2, Roon and HEOS. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Denon PMA-900HNE takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | PS Audio Sprout100 is Class D and Denon PMA-900HNE is Class A/B. Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle; Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | PS Audio Sprout100 takes up about 81% less shelf area (329cm² against 1710cm²), and it is 185mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | PS Audio Sprout100 costs less - $799 against $949 at list. |
A PS Audio Sprout100 B Denon PMA-900HNE
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: Denon PMA-900HNE measures better, PS Audio Sprout100 costs about 16% 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 - PS Audio Sprout100 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating.
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.