I bought one a little while ago as well. Whilst I haven’t been using it full time yet, I have spent a fair amount of time customising it and experimenting with it.
Installation
So getting Roon Bridge installed was the first order of business. This has been talked about on a few threads here and in the OSMC forum. All you need to do is follow the easy installer instructions on the link below for the armv7hf build: https://kb.roonlabs.com/LinuxInstall
Audio Outputs
Once installed, Roon will immediately pick up the Vero with three potential output devices. I was originally a little confused about this and thought that the three outputs pointed to the 3 physical outputs on the Vero - they do not. Only the first one really works here, and it plays through all outputs simultaneously. Which is something new to me, I’m used to outputs on a computer being controlled separately. This is apparently not possible (or quite difficult) to do with the Vero.
I tested HDMI, SPDIF and 3.5 outs and they all worked perfectly.
I’m yet to test multichannel audio via HDMI and SPDIF.
Switching between Kodi and Roon is also quite painless. Pause either and then begin playing from the other and it will switch over. The Vero won’t allow Kodi/Roon to play audio simultaneously.
Sleep
Roon Bridge is always available even when the Vero is in “sleep” mode. It’s not a sleep mode in the true sense. It’s something custom the OSMC crew have implemented which reduces energy consumption of the device.
I was able to set up the Vero so that I could control my TV/AVR with HDMI-CEC to come on when I woke it and turn off when I put it to sleep. That means I can wake the Vero to watch vids on the telly, and manually turn on the AVR to listen to music via Roon Bridge while the Vero is asleep. That was as close as I could get to keep the video capabilities of the Vero seperate to using it as a dedicated Roon endpoint. It’s probably a better experience than what you would get using a HTPC.
If you wanted to have a dedicated “Roon” input on your AVR, you could use the Vero’s SPDIF output for that and still connect HDMI to your AVR for video content - switching to the Roon endpoint via your AVR remote or some other dedicated button, and using HDMI-CEC to automatically switch to the HDMI input on your AVR when the Vero wakes (and thus waking your TV as it’s further down the HDMI-CEC chain).
Reliability
In the time I have been tinkering with the device, I have found that it is incredibly flexible and capable providing you aren’t trying to do something that it wasn’t designed for (like say outputting different audio to separate outputs at once, something any Mac or Windows PC can handle). And with that comes a proneness for instability. I think out of the box it works very well, and one must be very diligent when making customisations not to take it too far and accidentally wipe out some core piece of functionality that would then require you to wipe and start fresh (something which is not very easy to do without a dedicated Micro SD card reader).
That said, I’m confident that once I have it configured to my liking I will be able to leave it on permanently and it will function day in, day out, perhaps with only the occasional need for a reboot (which is more than I can say for my DietPi endpoint, which fails to reconnect to my Wifi almost daily).
It receives fairly regular (at least in Roon land) monthly/bi monthly updates. These also have a tendency to wipe out customisations that have been added. I painstakingly programmed the Vero remote to my exact liking and part of that involved messing with the internals that ended up getting overridden as soon as I updated. I’ll probably be able to get them back, but it will take more time to repeat steps I dug up on the OSMC forum.
It’s a platform that requires a lot of time, research, knowledge and patience to work with and to customise. That said, it’s possible to do a lot with it and to really tweak it to your hearts content - if that’s your thing. If it’s not you’ll be happy enough to chuck Roon Bridge on there and listen away, whilst switching between that and Kodi to watch flicks in 4k/HDR10/Atmos and basically every other surround sound format bitstreamed to your AVR.