Hi Kyle,
I'm glad that you mentioned it. I actually spent some time last Saturday playing around with VitOS. I posted some of my thoughts over on the Roon Community. Here's a link:
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/silent-angel-vitos/90551/19
I have not done a direct comparison with DietPi or my Allo USBridge Signature (currently running DietPi), but I plan to soon. I can tell you that it sounds great and is an easy install.
The mobile app looks nice, although I'm not sure what practical purpose it serves. It shows the version of VitOS firmware, network addresses, and the version of Roon Bridge. You can also stop/start/restart Roon Bridge from the VitOS app, but I've never had a need to do this on any other endpoint. In fact, I've not had a reason to do it since installing VitOS either.
Some things to be aware of before trying VitOS:
- It is wired Ethernet only. No Wi-Fi. In fact, Wi-Fi defeats the purpose of the O/S, which is to reduce network latency to the greatest extent possible.
- It requires a Raspberry Pi 4. I've not tried, but from what I understand, the firmware is not compatible with the Raspberry Pi 3 or other models.
- It has not received updates since December of 2019. The O/S is based on Arch Linux ARM, so you may be able to update parts of the O/S using the pacman command, but care should be taken to avoid updating the kernel or any libraries that support the low-latency features that are part of the design.
- It is optimized for Roon. I have not attempted to use it with any other music system, but Roon is amazing, so that's not a problem. ;-)
Here's a parts list of bits I would buy if I was building a Roon USB Network Audio Transport based on VitOS today:
If your DAC gets its power from the USB connection, I'd suggest this bundle, which injects clean 5V power into the USB connection between the Raspberry Pi and your DAC:
If you don't have a suitable USB DAC, I've been having a blast with this Khadas Tone Board, which is very well built for $100 (a bit more for the built-it-yourself plastic case and USB cable):
The Tone Board sounds great with just about any content, but I've found that DSD64 sounds best. Fortunately, it's easy to configure Roon's "Sample Rate Conversion" DSP to upsample everything to DSD64. The default filter settings are fine. If you'd like to learn more, you can read about my analysis here.
I'm not sure that I understand the business model of Silent Angel, but it looks like they do sell bespoke streaming hardware, including their RHEIN Z1, which also runs VitOS. I have not been able to find much more information about it besides what's on their website, but it looks like it runs for around $1,600…probably sounds great. I'm hoping they sell a lot so that VitOS continues to be maintained and available for the DIY crowd. :)
Please comment in this thread if you decide to build your own VitOS Roon endpoint. Let me know if you have questions.