I don't know of that many motherboards with on-board SPDIF _input_, most just have output (and not terribly good output at that). The AES16 and the L22 are within $50 of each other, with the AES16 usually being cheaper.
The logic behind buying the professional card is that you get AES/EBU balanced digital rather than SPDIF, and you get the ability to use an external wordclock. They do seem pretty expensive for what they are, though. You don't need 16 channels, but I don't know of a good and cheaper digital-only card.
All DACs without wordclock input use some sort of clock-recovery circuitry, as AES/EBU and SPDIF are self-clocked protocols and the DAC chip wants to receive a clocked I2S signal. It's easier to do this well if you have clock sync between the sending and receiving devices.
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