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 - 60W against 50W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Noise floor | A | Rotel A12 MKII is the quieter design on paper - 100dB against 76dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Rotel A12 MKII goes higher - 384kHz 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 | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (4). |
| 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 | A | Rotel A12 MKII costs less - $1,100 against $1,700 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Rotel A12 MKII is the cheaper watt - about $18 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 Rotel A12 MKII 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?
Rotel A12 MKII is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Audiolab 6000A Play if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. Think about the whole system: the roughly $600 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, which does more for the sound than the difference between two competent amplifiers.
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.