I only use this for Stereo listening. I got this because my vintage 1981 Sherwood S9600-CO has no remote volume control. This A/V receiver has a great sound, virtually identical sound as my vintage receiver. The phono section (preamp) is very fine indeed, and it alone is worth the $50 I just paid! All controls are well laid out, and the display is easy to see from my listening position. I have no harshness in the sound at all, so I dont know what another reviewer was listening to. The amp section is all discrete, and sounds very smooth, detailed, It has plenty of current capacity to run even 2 ohm loads. My speakers don’t require that, but it means it has dynamic, or transient headroom. My 1989 Polk Audio RTA 8T tower speakers are very happy being fed by this receiver! Don’t shy away from this if you are looking for an INEXPENSIVE, but not cheaply made receiver to run your 2 channel system for vinyl or cassette deck! For me, this receiver is the bargain of the century!! I also like the arrangement of controls on the remote. Intuitive! That’s rare.

The only weakness I can see is that it does not have an infrasonic filter to roll off sound below 20 Hz. That’s handy for vinyl record playback.

For the money this is unbeatable for AV performance. BUT - for straight stereo listening the sound is awful. Harsh and unforgiving, it hurt my ears! Think carefully before buying as I'd recommend hooking a processor up to an existing integrated amp - I've now sold my R-125 and done this.

The 125RDS is a bottom of the range budget Pro-Logic Receiver - but good at the price - mine another from Richer Sounds for £150.I have been running the unit for about nine months now but unfortunately it has to go back - due to spurious buzzings, primarily from the centre channel (the sort of noise you get from your turntable if you try it without the ground lead connected!)
I have heard a better budget deck since purchasing - try Yamaha for size!

I recently sold my Pioneer A-225 Amp and decided to go upmarket and buy a ProLogic receiver of some sort, so I went down to my local WH Smith newsagent-type-place and bough a What Hi-Fi magazine. It had the most amazing deal in it - a ProLogic Receiver, with RDS and remote control for £150 GB Pounds!! I think that's about $250 USD! The receiver has 35W RMS for each channel - left, right, centre and rears, which I thought wasn't bad, and in normal stereo mode, 52W per channel RMS, which I also thought was pretty good!
So I went down to my local friendly Richer Sounds store(a large Hi-Fi chain in the UK - very cheap :-) They had one on demo in the home cinema demo room and it sounded great, so I went and bought one myself, and it's still great!! So far, I've watched Apollo 13 and Stargate on SKY in prologic - I mostly use it for music in my bedroom. I can definitely recommend it to anyone, but as far as I know, it's only available from Richer Sounds (in the UK, that is).

I bought one a couple of years ago, and fair play, it was an average prologic performer and pretty disasterous music player.BUT!! I discovered through tinkering that the subwoofer pre-out actually supplies a full range signal, so you can hook up a decent amp to power your main front speakers and the music is sweet again! Plus you can control the volume using the 125 remote.
Since then I have now added 2 Sherwood 4050 amps (daisy chained) for powering the front speakers and also a pair of subs. The amp for the subs is equalised/adjusted using a Sherwood EQ5010, and also a Sherwood 5 disc changer. And yes, before you ask, it is ALL controlled COMPLETELY by the 125 remote!
This combo is AWESOME in every manner. If you have the money+time, try it!
It beats the hell out of just about everything I have ever heard.

OJ