Bill,
I’m going to continue OT for a moment, to close off on this tangent. Since you are connecting to an endpoint over a wired network connection, then…
You’ve got an AAE, and I’ve also got a Aurelic Aries Mini that’s also an AirPlay device. So I don’t need to tell you that it sounds pretty good, but is limited to 16/44.1. My Cubox-i (and some Rasberry PI’s and other ARM devices) running Squeezelite get past that and can run Hi-Res content, including DSD using DoP (providing your DAC supports it). However, all of those solutions are now bested by this little device, that’s really a Cubox-I running RoonReady software. So you’ll get RAAT and - someday - possibly MQA support. And it comes with a low-noise linear power supply, likely putting it sonically ahead of my Squeezelite Cubox-i solution.
BUT before you run out and buy a Sonicore SonicOrbiter SE, please note that Sonicore has announced a follow-up product to the SonicOrbiter SE. Can’t recall the product name, but they have gone on record saying that they will discontinue the SonicOrbiter SE once the new product is released. Just as the Cubox-I is arguably sonically superior to a RPi due to the former being hardware designed from the ground up as a multimedia device, the new Sonicore hardware will be designed from the ground up as a Roon device (only). Thus arguably sonically superior to the SonicOrbiter SE.
Decisions, decisions…
NICE to have options now! 