Ipac2 vs Xin-MO in 2020???

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Hello,

I built my first full size arcade the end of last year. I set it up with Retropie and have become very comfortable on a basic level and love it. I'm running everything on a 3B+. I started it with a cheap Amazon arcade button kit but now I have gotten the itch to add a control panel overlay and upgrade buttons, sticks, and encoders.

With that being said I've been reading online about the issues with the Xin-Mo encoder not registering second player, but with a minor tweaks to the script that can be remedied. I also read through the wiki page regarding the IPAC2 setup with it being registered as a keyboard as opposed to a Gamepad which presents some basic and more complex issues. I think I have read every Post online to try to sort this out. Anyway here are my concerns:

Most all of the informative threads such as the IPAC Retropie wiki page are 2 or more years old.
The set up on my cheap amazon kit was plug and play. Retropie picked up and allowed me to program both encoders like controllers. I'm afraid I'm gonna drop $200 in the new setup and get lost in the woods.

Initial questions:

I have emailed Ultimarc and they said the newest firmware allows for easy changes between modes. There is a new mode called "Mode 3 Xinput for 2 player gamepad controls." Has anyone used the Ipac recently and can explain how easy and efficient these settings are?
For the Xin-Mo users, is the setup still the same in 2020? In other words, if I go with a Xin-MO encoder with my up to date Retropie will I still need to add the line in the boot.txt to enable 2 players, or is this old information?
I'm planning on using 2 joysticks and 20 buttons (including start and select buttons). From what I have read both of these encoders will have no problems. Please let me know if anyone has experienced issues with either of these?

Thanks