I don't know why, but Stereophile has a decided bias against optical. I have seen references to "digital fog" and bandwidth issues of optical vs coax. I have seen in more than one place it mentioned that even though coax, because it is electrical and can have more susceptibility to EMI/RFI, does in fact do much better in terms of jitter than optical. Maybe due to the extra electrical-to-optical and back conversion that's necessary for Toslink. FWIW.