I'm not an "audiophile", which in my opinion is like an electronic "wine snob". However I have owned several different systems over the years, including vintage Fisher tube equipment.
Am I going to tell you it blows away equipment costing thousands more? I don't have anything to compare it to. Can I produce charts and graphs indicating performance characteristics way beyond the capacity of the human ear: No!
What I can tell you is that it a good value, and sounds great through decent speakers. Contrary to those reports where people slam the instructions, it is very easy to set up. I think that anyone who had problems setting this thing up should not be using electronic equipment. Panasonic typically does not include volumes of instructions with any of their products.
My recommendation almost a year later though, is that I should have bought the SAXR45, because it has one more spdif input than the 25.
By the time i bought the cables and converters I needed to add an addition pices of equipent, I paid more than the original cost difference.