The 525 uses digital bass management, which means the signal goes through an extra set of AD/DA conversions. I don't know if that makes an audible difference, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the ultra-high resolution provided by DVD-A and SACD.
I'm not aware of any affordable receivers that do analog bass management on the multichannel inputs, but Outlaw's ICBM is a reasonably-priced add-on.
Of course, if you have full-range speakers all around then you might not care about bass management.
