These are not the same size of amplifier: Rotel RA-1572 MKII has roughly 2x the power of Rotel A12 MKII. That is about 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 | Rotel RA-1572 MKII has more power - 120W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Rotel RA-1572 MKII the better fit for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room, and Rotel A12 MKII for desk or near-field listening and a small room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (100dB vs 100dB). |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board, but only Rotel RA-1572 MKII handles MQA. |
| 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 | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (4). |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Price | B | Rotel A12 MKII costs less - $1,100 against $2,100 at list. |
A Rotel RA-1572 MKII B Rotel A12 MKII
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: Rotel RA-1572 MKII measures better, Rotel A12 MKII costs about 48% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. 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 - Rotel RA-1572 MKII has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 60 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 60 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Rotel RA-1572 MKII poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. Think about the whole system: the roughly $1,000 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.