Nope, I did not order the Musiland. Yes, I am currently running the Xonar Essence ST PCI version. I think I'm going to wait until next year and get these items:
Based on everything I have read, the i2s interface is superior to COAX spdif. Since I don't care about DSD, this i2s card should work out really well. It's the only computer i2s card I know of and it does not support DSD direct. (I think I can still use DOP through Jriver).
Guess you'll just have to take a chance with your decision. On one hand, the Musiland has some pretty good hardware design approaches. On the other hand, Xonar is excellent as well and uses power directly from the power supply (via a hard drive plug) instead of drawing power from the PCI slot like the Musiland does. With the Xonar, you are also paying for the DAC and analog stages of the sound card. In any event, I'm sure it will be much better than toslink from the MOBO.
Bright / neutral / warm has more to do with how the power supply and analog stages are engineered. The choice of DAC chip has almost nothing to do with this. :)