Airport Express vs. proper Airplay stereo amp, or other solution?

Just wondering if anyone here has experience with the AEX (ideally the later square model)?
Or even some thoughts on wireless lossless audio in general.

I grabbed a couple last night and really like what they do (especially the ability to play through a few at once), but I am a bit concerned about the DAC/output quality. I know Ken Rockwell reviewed this model and gave it a gleaming review, but I'm dubious of his review - partially because using my headphones on the AEX DAC seems to have slightly less clarity than the DAC out of my macbook air - and mostly because he rates the TOSLINK output as "perfect", when it seems to be a well known fact that the current AEX (2012+) has a very jittery optical output that results in skipping on a lot of DACs. But that's just my subjective opinion on the analog output, and what I've read about the digital output (for what it's worth the optical was fine on the older model with the plug on the box).

So I'm interested in what you guys think if you've tried them. I don't have an amplifier with optical in, and it's made me wonder if in the long term it'd yield the best results to just buy an Airplay stereo amp (something like the Yamaha R-N301 in particular). It seems to me like a better option than dealing with potentially flaky optical outputs from the Apple devices anyway + needing a separate DAC etc.

If it's of any use I'm not playing anything above CD quality (mostly lossless from iTunes, 16bit/44.1khz). From what I've gathered also, the AppleTV optical output is better than the AEX but it also resamples into 48khz which probably involves some losses.

I don't have a large budget to play with for whatever it's worth, a basic Airplay stereo amp/receiver is probably the most I'd consider, but I am curious what the hard word is on the topic anyway.

Thanks in advance