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Louder-ESP32 and Louder-ESP32-Plus

The Sonocotta Louder-ESP32 boards carry a TI TAS58xx combined DAC and Class-D amplifier, the same family the Esparagus Audio Brick uses. Speakers connect directly.

The Plus boards are fitted with a TAS5825M; the plain boards with a TAS5805M. Both are driven by the same driver, which reads the die ID at startup, so the difference is what the part can do rather than which build you flash:

  • Volume, mute and the 15-band parametric Equaliser work on both parts.
  • Process flows and full PPC3 dumps are a TAS5825M feature. A TAS5805M has no flow-select register, so the driver skips a dump rather than write it to the wrong place. See TAS5805M boards.

Volume is done in the amplifier (CONFIG_DAC_CONTROLS_VOLUME) rather than in software.

Variants

Environment Chip Amplifier Bluetooth Prebuilt
louder-esp32 ESP32 TAS5805M — —
louder-esp32-bt ESP32 TAS5805M yes yes
louder-esp32-plus ESP32 TAS5825M — —
louder-esp32-plus-bt ESP32 TAS5825M yes yes
louder-esp32-s3 ESP32-S3 TAS5805M — yes
louder-esp32-s3-plus ESP32-S3 TAS5825M — yes

Bluetooth Classic exists only on the original ESP32, so neither S3 board has a -bt build. On an ESP32 the published binary is the Bluetooth one.

Esparagus Louder is a separate board

The Esparagus Louder is the same amplifier family on Sonocotta's Esparagus form factor and has its own environments (esparagus-louder, -bt, -s3). Its ESP32 build differs from louder-esp32 in pinout: it has a FAULTZ line and an RGB LED, and no PDN pin.

Features

  • TAS5825M or TAS5805M with on-chip DSP and a 15-band parametric EQ (25 Hz – 16 kHz)
  • Hardware volume control with a configurable maximum level
  • Automatic power state management driven by AirPlay session state
  • 8 MB flash
  • Bluetooth A2DP on the ESP32 variants
  • W5500 SPI Ethernet with automatic WiFi failover
  • SH1106 OLED over SPI, sharing the Ethernet bus

Flashing

Use the Louder installer for your board on the flashing page.

# ESP32 + TAS5805M
pio run -e louder-esp32-bt -t upload
pio run -e louder-esp32-bt -t uploadfs

# ESP32 + TAS5825M
pio run -e louder-esp32-plus-bt -t upload
pio run -e louder-esp32-plus-bt -t uploadfs

# ESP32-S3 + TAS5805M
pio run -e louder-esp32-s3 -t upload
pio run -e louder-esp32-s3 -t uploadfs

# ESP32-S3 + TAS5825M
pio run -e louder-esp32-s3-plus -t upload
pio run -e louder-esp32-s3-plus -t uploadfs

idf.py set-target esp32
idf.py -DSDKCONFIG_DEFAULTS="config/sdkconfig.defaults;config/sdkconfig.defaults.louder-esp32-plus;config/sdkconfig.defaults.bt" build
idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 flash

Swap in config/sdkconfig.defaults.louder-esp32-s3-plus after idf.py set-target esp32s3 for the S3 revision.

Default GPIO assignments

The ESP32 and S3 revisions share no pinout. The Plus boards differ from the plain ones only in the Ethernet chip select and the OLED chip select.

Function Louder-ESP32 Louder-ESP32-Plus ESP32-S3 (both)
I2S BCK 26 26 14
I2S WS 25 25 15
I2S DO 22 22 16
I2C SDA 21 21 8
I2C SCL 27 27 9
Amplifier PDN 33 33 17
SPI SCLK 18 18 12
SPI MOSI 23 23 11
SPI MISO 19 19 13
Ethernet CS 5 15 10
Ethernet INT 35 35 6
Ethernet RST 14 14 5
Display CS 15 5 47
Display DC 4 4 38
Display RST 32 32 48

PDN is driven high once at boot and then left alone — it is the amplifier's power-down pin, not the per-track mute the Loud and Amped boards toggle from playback events.