Why does the 990 have only 2 digital coax inputs? This is confusing to me. I would much rather use a digital coax than toslink. Can someone please explain this to me.

Not many things seem to use digital coax anymore, everything is optical. Besides, how many digital sources do you need? More than SIX?

There are inexpensive optical-to-coax adapters around.

I don't need more than six but I have more than 2 sources that utilize digital coax connections. I do have an adapter around but I just think its odd that the 990 only comes with 2 coax inputs.

You must have some old equipment

I am under the assumption that digital coax is better than toslink. Am I wrong? I remember that the toslink cable can get bent easily leading to degraded sound and leakage. Does this still apply to todays wires?

Digital is digital. The signal either gets to where it's going or it doesn't. You'll find others who will argue about jitter and error correction in toslink connections but in my opinion it's all bollocks. Toslink and coax digital connections are indistinguishable from each other.

link

Here's my standard comment on the issue of coaxial or optical toslink connections: optical does require a conversion from electrical to optical signal, but it is also immune to RF and EM interference - which can be a very good thing over long runs or in environments where the cable must run parallel to speaker and power cables. You can break an optical cable, at which point you'll start to lose data and have obvious problems - so you don't want to put a right-angle bend in one, but that sort of treatment isn't recommended for any of the cables we find ourselves putting into our equipment racks.

In my experience, I've not been able to conclusively find a difference between the two when everything else was equal.

yeah but if Outlaw made the 990 with only two opticals.. then lots of people would be upset too. so it goes both ways..

plus, as i see it.. digtial is digital. use good high quality digital cables and you'll be happy. use poorly built ones.. and well, you'll see.

I use one coax digital to my 990, the rest use glass optical cables. works great. everyone is happy. and it sound excellent.