These are not the same size of amplifier: Peachtree Carina has roughly 4.3x the power of Denon PMA-1700NE. That is about 6.3dB, 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 | A | Peachtree Carina has more power - 300W against 70W into 8 ohms. That is about 6.3dB - a different class of amplifier rather than a bigger version of the same one, and far more than most rooms will ever ask for. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Peachtree Carina the better fit for a large room and a very large room, and Denon PMA-1700NE for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size 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 nearly doubles (580W and 140W). |
| Noise floor | A | Peachtree Carina is the quieter design on paper - 116dB against 107dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Peachtree Carina goes higher - 768kHz against 384kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Phono stage | depends | Denon PMA-1700NE has a built-in phono stage (MM,MC) and Peachtree Carina 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 | A | Only Peachtree Carina offers preamp outputs - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Peachtree Carina is Class D and Denon PMA-1700NE 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 | Peachtree Carina takes up about 34% less shelf area (1289cm² against 1949cm²), and it is 86mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Peachtree Carina is the cheaper watt - about $7 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 Peachtree Carina B Denon PMA-1700NE
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?
Peachtree Carina has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. 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 - Peachtree Carina has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 70 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 230 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Peachtree Carina poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Denon PMA-1700NE 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.