[Kymmy]

I have SPDIF on the motherboard (old asus) but regulary use optical or co-axial via my cambridge audio DTS decoder with the multimedia players and SAT

Lee, check your onboard sound chip, if it's only a few years old you might find that you have an SPDIF header onboard, an old SPDIF decoder on ebay will be dirt cheap and will enable you to plug directly into your mixer/amp