I’ve been looking for a module to handle audio output (ie. mp3, wma, wav, etc.) for such scenarios as text-to-speech or simple playback from files stored on SD or streamed from web. I found that AMP and Music modules are discontinued and the Audio module only plays simple tones. Is there any alternative solution or way to accomplish this?
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I poked around a bit, did not see much chatter about the music module being discontinued. Anyone know why it was discontinued? Not popular, nobody needs audio output, better alternatives exist, etc? Was there something wrong with this module in hardware, or software that was not worth fixing?
I haven’t seen any good alternatives. I still have my music module, I used it for text to speech in v4.2, but have not tried it using v4.3.
Anyway, any insight on the story here is appreciated.
@ dapug - It was based on several things related to the business side of things and not technical issues. Which is my nice way saying, the community didn’t buy enough of them. 
I like to add the this chip and others are available on boards from many sources. Yes it does not have the Gadgeteer socket but it can be soldered to a Gadgeteer breakout module with minimal soldering experience.
@ Anyone: what bit transfer rate can be expected when, let’s say reading a sound file from some memory card (with buffering if need be) and outputting/streaming that to a USB connected audio device ??
Raptor … and yes my 1st question could be like you stated, and your answer would be ?
@ andre.m - the audio device would not be the limiting factor here, that can handle up to 384 kbps on a 32 bits resolution, that’s just running fine as we speak. Connected through USB on another piece of hardware (not gadgeteer or netmf).
Let’s assume we have unlimited resource avail on the raptor, what would than be the max rate possible outputting through USB. I would require some estimated rate so I can do a educated guess of whether that what I try to do is possible at all ?
@ PiWi - High speed data is clocked at 480.00Mb/s Full speed 12 and low speed is 1.50
@ Architect - So raptor can do usb 2.0 on the usb host ?
And I’m currently playing a file at 18432 Kbps bit rate for 2 channels and a bit depth of 24 bits makes a total of 18432242 (+overhead) = 884736 Kbps = 884 Mbps ?
If my math is correct, can this be done on a raptor via the USB host ?
@ PiWi - I am not sure about HS (GHI needs to be more specific in the feature list description). I was just referencing the speed values in general.