It appears it can't convert from digital optical to coaxial, so all the devices you want to use with the switch have to be the same, or whatever you connecting the output to has to be willing to accept coaxial audio sometimes and optical other times.I'm also not a big fan of the way it switches devices. You have to teach it an IR command, but what if you are using it with a device that doesn't have a remote (say a game console, for example). Now you have one more device to adjust because they didn't want to include a remote.I haven't noticed signal degradation, though I haven't used it much yet. Over all I'm pretty disappointed because what I got doesn't match the description very closely. I should have done more research.Though I