You do need six audio cables from the DVD player to the 990, which you will need to connect to the left, right, center, left surround, right surround, and subwoofer channels of the 990's 7.1 Direct input (there's a button on the 990's remote labeled "7.1 D" that will select this input, and you can assign the DVD component video input to the 7.1 Direct input so that you have video available without any extra cables).