Open source player?

[code_311]

I searched but didn't find any posts, has anyone seen this yet? Open source player called tangara.

https://sr.ht/~jacqueline/tangara/

https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara

Is an ESP32 capable of running rockbox?

[Trzyzet]

The most powerful ESP32 has about a 0.5MB of RAM. I think it's not enough.

[speachy]

The most powerful ESP32 has about a 0.5MB of RAM. I think it's not enough.

This device is built around an ESP32-WROVER module with two ESP32 cores @230MHz, and 8MB of QSPI-attached external PSRAM.    Use of PSRAM will yield a perforamance hit but the overall system shoud still be plenty fast enough for the full rockbox feature set.

(I'm 95% certain only 4MB of PSRAM is directly mappable at a time, but it _should_ be possible to play games with the MMU to work around that)

[llnx1]

Is there any price estimate ?

[amachronic]

(I'm 95% certain only 4MB of PSRAM is directly mappable at a time, but it _should_ be possible to play games with the MMU to work around that)

Yep, the ESP32 reference manual is pretty explicit that the entire virtual address space is 4 MB -- the MMU section makes this a bit more obvious. I think it'd be like PAE on x86, if you could segment things into processes of 4 MB max memory you'd be okay. But trying to use all 8 MB from a single process would be impossible without major hacks.

The ESP32-S3 has 32 MB of virtual address space, however, which would be plenty.

[speachy]

The ESP32-S3 has 32 MB of virtual address space, however, which would be plenty.

Alas, the "not recommended for new designs" WROVER module in this proposed Tangara design only has a pair of LX6 cores, not the LX7s found in the -S3.

[Trzyzet]

Use of PSRAM will yield a perforamance hit

In a perfect world SPI RAM speed is about 40MB/s, with larger files its even half that speed. I don't know if rockbox uses it but there is no DMA.

[speachy]

In a perfect world SPI RAM speed is about 40MB/s, with larger files its even half that speed. I don't know if rockbox uses it but there is no DMA.

PSRAM is handled completely transparently by the ESP32's memory controller (so DMA is a non-issue).  It's also 4-bit parallel (ie QSPI) that can clock up to 120MHz, and there's a cache in front of it.  Worst-case performance will be in random writes (and to a lesser extent reads), but larger bulk transfers can hit just shy of 60MB/s.  This doesn't seem like a lot, but consider that most code can be directly executed from flash (and the truly critical stuff can live in IRAM).

[Trzyzet]

If it is like you describe I am happy with that. Everything I described in earlier post was my prepandemic experience with esp32.
I had 6 different modules and none of it was able to run with PSRAM clocks faster than 60MHz.

[spaceship9876]

a possible player for $42: https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/11/16/lilygo-t-display-s3-pro-a-2-33-inch-esp32-s3-color-touchscreen-display-with-enclosure/

[speachy]

a possible player for $42: https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/11/16/lilygo-t-display-s3-pro-a-2-33-inch-esp32-s3-color-touchscreen-display-with-enclosure/

Unfortunately, The lack of an audio jack and only two physical buttons make this a poor candidate for a DAP.

[spaceship9876]

It looks like there might be a new flagship chip from Actions Semi: ATS2158. specs: https://www.actions-semi.com/index.php?c=download&id=2758&siteId=4

The previous flagship audio chip from them was the ATJ2167, here was the specs for that chip: https://voz.vn/attachments/screenshot_20221011-232140-png.1434540/

[speachy]

It looks like there might be a new flagship chip from Actions Semi: ATJ2158. specs: https://www.actions-semi.com/index.php?c=download&id=2758&siteId=4

I don't know if I could call this a "flagship" chip; it's not clear from this quick spec sheet this part doesn't have anywhere near enough RAM to implement full Rockbox feature set.  We'd also effectively be forced to run only the codecs the hardware is cabable of handling. Of course, that presumes we'd get usable documentation, someting that Actions Semi has historically not provided. 

Also, the ATJ2159 is probably the better choice than the 2158, as it drops the DSP core in favor of a much higher clock speed on the Cortex-M4, plus also supporting more codecs and 24-bit/96KHz operation.  (I suspect the 2158 is intended to be used in noise-canceling headphone appliations)

...Actions did produce SoCs that are capable of running the full rockbox feature set (eg the ATJ213x family) but the 2127/2157/2167 parts are intended for shovelware low-end DAPs.

[spaceship9876]

are there any plans for rockbox to support risc-v, if so maybe this would be viable? - https://www.gigadevice.com/product/mcu/risc-v/gd32vw553kmq7

[saratoga]

are there any plans for rockbox to support risc-v, if so maybe this would be viable? - https://www.gigadevice.com/product/mcu/risc-v/gd32vw553kmq7

Aside from it being a lot of work, porting to a different ISA is possible and people have done it in the past.  However that device has very little memory and so would not be a good choice.  While you could squeeze into slightly less, anything under 2 MB of RAM is probably not worth it.