I rode high-end steel road bikes for about 40 years and then bought my first aluminum bike and fell in love and bought a few more. I did also buy one carbon road bike, figuring that that might be even better, but I made the mistake of buying one with a slightly longer wheelbase than my racing-geometry aluminum bikes.
It's OK, and I did keep riding it for a couple of years, having spent the money, but I was almost glad when I cracked a dropout on the carbon bike as a result of doing a sloppy job of installing it on an indoor trainer. Now it's my permanent trainer bike, and I'm back to doing all my road miles on my aluminum bikes.
You'll probably be happy with whatever bike you choose, since you seem open-minded about the choices available. Just posting to let you know that some of us have found that we're at least as happy with aluminum as with carbon bikes.