Now that is an interesting discovery, jrlouie - and one that can potentially be resolved with a firmware change, I suspect. In the meanwhile, if you have any spare inputs you could move the analog connection there and use that input for zone 2.

Interesting indeed - if a firmware change can allow digital signals to be sent to zone 2 - maybe after conversion to analog - maybe we can hope for a similar improvement for the Tape Out signals; i.e., letting them also include stuff from digital audio inputs, after being DACed, of course. Or would this require a hardware change, maybe a wiring split-off just before the volume control? That would fix one of the 990's few shortcomings.

My thinking regarding jrlouie's discovery was that it might be possible to isolate the analog stereo input from the DSP entirely when a digital input is specified for active input, so that the DSP wouldn't get confused and do something odd. In that case, though, the analog connection would still be present and available for the record output and second zone. I doubt that a firmware change can allow digital signals to reach the second zone or the record outputs - that gets into some signal management issues that quickly involve hardware issues. Producing a digital stereo signal could potentially be done in parallel with the main zone's signal (which is often multichannel), but converting that separate signal to analog would require an extra DAC. On the other hand, intercepting the signal downstream of the main zone DAC's would require either an analog circuit to downmix multichannel audio to stereo (if that is even possible, something that I'm not qualified to speak on) or a willingness to discard center and surround channels in the second zone when the main zone is operating with a multichannel source. And all of that is just for the record outputs, when the signal in question is the same one going to the main zone - for the second zone, it gets more complex.

I wonder if the 990 has a given timeframe it tries to detect both analog and digital signals and maybe that timeframe isn't long enough. Maybe the analog signal hits the 990 sooner and the digital detection "times out" so-to-speak. So, it grabs the analog signal and miliseconds later the digital signal finally is received by the 990 and it is too late by then.
I really don't know enough about the internal workings of processors. All speculation on my behalf.


3 days and not a single issue with the analog unplugged, and still counting

I haven't submitted a ticket yet. Figured I'd wait a day or two more.

Man, what clock does the forum go by. I just posted this around I'm guessing 8:43 PM and it says 1:43 AM. I figured the greatest it could be was 1 hour for Eastern time since I'm in Central.

Your speculation isn't far removed from mine. It's what led me to theorize that since there isn't a true "auto polling" feature similar to what the 1070 and 970 have, it would be appropriate to simply allow the 990 to ignore the very existence of the stereo analog input when a digital input is connected.

The clock's been a bit odd since a software update a while back to help deal with some spamming. I think that it has itself confused between Eastern and Greenwich time somehow.