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 | Rotel RA-1572 MKII has more power - 120W against 80W 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 Rotel RA-1572 MKII the better fit for a large room and a very large room, and Roksan Attessa Integrated Amp for 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 (200W and 130W). |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (100dB vs 98dB). |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Rotel RA-1572 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 Rotel RA-1572 MKII has Roon. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Rotel RA-1572 MKII takes more analogue sources - 4 against 2. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Rotel RA-1572 MKII is the cheaper watt - about $18 per watt against $26. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Rotel RA-1572 MKII B Roksan Attessa Integrated Amp
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 RA-1572 MKII 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 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.