I have a Mythbuntu system setup and I'm looking to add a better soundcard to I can send 5.1 surround to my AV equipment. I am looking for a low profile sound card that will fit my case. I have 1 pci and 1 1x pci-e slot open. I'm thinking the pci would be preferable so that some future tv tuner card can use the extra pci-e bandwidth.

One card I was looking at is the asus Xonar D-1 (Newegg link)

I was planning to simply pass the signal through a TOS-LINK spdif connection. This would pass the signal digitally so my thought is that I don't need a really expensive sound card to do this. In this scenario the sound card isn't really doing much at all. It's just taking the DTS digital signal and transmitting that digitally over the TOS-LINK to be processed by the AV receiver. If it's a lower quality card it doesn't matter because the signal is digital, it's either 100% or none right? If thats true is there a cheaper low profile sound card that will fit my case that has good Linux support?

Also, to answer some questions ahead of time, yes my mobo has a sound card with a spdif connector on it. But due to a stupid wiring mistake I think I have "smoked it". There WAS smoke, the sound card still works alright, but after wiring it up with a virgin TOS-LINK spdif output I get no light out of the LED. Still trying to exhaust all testing but I think it's a lost cause.

In addition, I've had 5.1 sound hooked up before with another box, so I know my sound system (Onkyo and Bose) supports it and have configured it successfully before.

Thanks again, any suggestions are welcome.