No, because it converts to 48 kHz (necessarily) and all DSP happens in 64 bit space. This won’t be the big drain, though.
I was wondering if the default „balanced“ setting, which means CD quality on WiFi, might convert the AAC to 44.1/16 FLAC first, but it doesn’t seem to.
Does it change anything if you set ARC streaming quality to „original format“ on WiFi?
Anyways, there were many complaints about ARC battery drain in older threads, and not too long ago they released some improvements, such as
but it might not yet cover all cases. I guess it’s time for opening a topic in Support