These are not the same size of amplifier: Rotel Diamond RA-6000 has roughly 3.9x the power of Yamaha A-S301. That is about 5.9dB, 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 | B | Rotel Diamond RA-6000 has more power - 235W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 5.9dB - 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 Yamaha A-S301 the better fit for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room, and Rotel Diamond RA-6000 for a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | B | Rotel Diamond RA-6000 holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output increases modestly to 350W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | B | Rotel Diamond RA-6000 is the quieter design on paper - 103dB against 99dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Rotel Diamond RA-6000 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 Diamond RA-6000 has Roon. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Yamaha A-S301 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 4. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Shelf space | depends | Yamaha A-S301 takes up about 14% less shelf area (1701cm² against 1979cm²), and it is 65mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Yamaha A-S301 costs less - $350 against $4,499 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Yamaha A-S301 is the cheaper watt - about $6 per watt against $19. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Yamaha A-S301 B Rotel Diamond RA-6000
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 Diamond RA-6000 measures better, Yamaha A-S301 costs about 92% 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 - Rotel Diamond RA-6000 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. 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 Diamond RA-6000 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 175 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Rotel Diamond RA-6000 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason.
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.