WoW.
Even this one can work ?
Yes that will work, you need to set it up as an audio endpoint using the airport utility and the in Roon.
Only AirPlay. So that thing canāt accept Ethernet in and SPDIF out ?
Then itās equal to Apple TV.
Same functionality as apple TV. But apple TV is 48 khz.
An airport is a wifi zone with combined optical/analogue out
The very early ones (models A1084 & A1088) wonāt work. I believe that model A1264 will (first gen. supporting 802.11n) will. Current hockey puck model (A1392) is fine for sure.
Like Steve said, they do WiFi in and SPDIF out. I think you can make the later ones work with just ethernet and no WiFi as well.
Theyāre also the best WiFi bridges (join your WiFi network and pass ethernet to a WiFi-less device) I know. Iāve been sending DSD512 over one for the best part of today. 
Donāt want to ruin the party but none of these ios jobbies are RAAT enabled or no?
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No party. At all. 
And no ā Airplay only. But the discussion was about ācheap Roon endpointsā ā not RAAT per se.
Here is an true Apple audio fan:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/how-to-create-a-whole-house-music-system.htm
To bad only AirPlay.
Just think if Apple implement RAAT. ā¦
WIth Roon 1.4 arenāt these iOS devices RAAT ready endpoints? Donāt know if lossless is a possibility but this is what the signal path looked like today
Yes, they are. My Airplay comment was limited to the Airport Expresses we were discussing.
Hereās the Zone Grouping screen on my system: a Pre Box S2 connected to a Cubox running Roon Bridge, a Roon Ready Pulse 2 and an iPhone 8+, all groupable via RAAT (the 1 zone that is left out is a Meridian device):
In the future the absolutly cheapest Roon endpoint will be CC ChromeCast.
But when it comes to cheapest quality endpoint, your old iOS device is probably the winner.
At this point with the iOS devices, Iām trying to get rid of the points in the signal path that are killing my lossless possibilities.
Also, instead of a wireless dongle or ethernet adapter, since the powered speakers need to be plugged in, Iām going to use a Netgear Powerline ethernet bridge to get signal to the pi. Iām using one of these powerline thingies now and they work well, sound is acceptable especially for a single outdoor powered speaker.
Edit to ask: why am I losing quality with a 44.1 to 48 sample rate conversion in the above photo?
Thatās you iOS system mixer at work. It it resamples the output on all recent (minijack-less) models to 48kHz for speakers, bluetooth and Lightning audio out cables (Apples own lighting-to-minijack adapter and Audezes lightning cable for example). Older models are able to output 44.1 and 48.
When using the Lighting-to-USB3 camera adapter that allows hooking up both power and a USB DAC of choice, output bypasses the iOS mixer and is bit perfect, even for high bitrates and DSD.
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Absolutely, works perfectly and in my opinion sound very good, nearly as good as a RaspberryPi with a Digi+ HAT.
(I am referring to playback of RedBook files)
I use mine (old model) as a WLAN to Ethernet Bridge to my Bluesound Vault and at the same time add AirPlay and Roon Endpoint functionality over itās optical output,. Itās a marvellous device!
Yes, that goes away if Iām using cck and dragonfly red,