GHI-MUSIC-GM-317 Music module detailed specs

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1

Hi,

I was wondering if anybody could give me some more detailed specs regarding the following music module: GHI-MUSIC-GM-317

I am interested in the following capabillities:

Is it capable of playing flac files?
If so, up to what bitrate? (The spec only shows MP3 OGG and WAV)
What maximum rate (both bitrate and samplerate) is supported for WAV?
Is it capable of accepting data in chunks in stead of delivering the audio file at once?

But the most important two items for me, before deciding to buy this board, are:

Is it capable of playing seamless (gapless) audio (like the once found on a mixing CD) when the tracks in question are delivered seperately? If so, does anyone already have a software pattern that takes care of this feature?

Does it have I2S pins for connecting to a custom DAC and are they enabled by default?

Thanks in advance…

2

I think you will get what you need better if you tell us what you want to do and we can show you the way :slight_smile:

This is the chip used on the module http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs8053.html

The module can play music off a connected media. If the supplied driver needed to be changed, you can do so easily as it is open source.
I2S is not supported.

Welcome to the community.

3

I already managed to play a 128kbps MP3 stream from internet on the music module connected to my spider for more than 5 hours without interuptions (stopped because I went to bed). I made a minor change in the driver (see the code site) and used a buffer (not ready for publishing). I had 1 thread filling the buffer and 1 thread to take data from the buffer and send it to the music module.

I had some problems playing a 192kbps MP3 stream, but that’s probably my bad coding (I’m only a FEZ Minor :wink: ).

4

Thanks for the replies guys,
Basically what I am looking for is a music module that can play the following:

WAV,Flac,MP3,OGG (if possible WMA)
All at a maximum rate of 192kHz 24bit. (minimum 16 bit, 44.1kHz)
The module has to be capable of playing tracks seamlessly, so without any audible gap between the tracks.
The tracks are retrieved from a mass storage device or from a network location.
The module will be connected to a processing module that should handle the following processes:

  1. Deliver the music data (in chuncks)
  2. React to events coming back from the music module for continuous (seamless) playing
  3. A network listener service on top of a network TCP/IP stack for retrieving music from the network.
  4. A web server on top of the same network TCP/IP stack for providing meta data to the user or let the user control the player.
  5. A SSDP service for auto discovery purposes.
  6. I2S output for connecting a cusotm DAC.
  7. Mass storage (USB) capabilities.

I was thinking of using the MUSIC GM-317 for this purpose and connect it to a FEZ Hydra.
I have done a couple of software projects with a FEZ Cobra, but for this purpose I might switch over to the FEZ hydra. Now, after reading the VLSI chip specs I suspect this music module is not capable of playing such high rates. (Looking at the used crystal value). But I am willing to compromise…

I also noticed the I2S ouputs being let to ground via a resistor. So the chip indeed supports I2S but not on this music module, correct?

If anyone could point me in the right direction as to where to start or show me some alternatives…
That would be very great.

Thanks
DJ

5

The chip supports up to 48 KHz sample rate.

I managed playing 1600 Kbps (48 KHz 24b/sample) FLAC’s with this chip (with a 13MHz crystal) but not with a .NET board (xmega).

On an EMX board I managed to get 800 Kbps FLAC streamed to the chip with the help of RLP. Still, if you want it to do anything else while streaming music, 320 Kbps is a limit (192 Kbps recommended).

If you really want 192 KHz 24bps, maybe a linux board (beagleboard, pandaboard, Raspberry Pi, CuBox) with USB DAC would do much better. Especially for streaming from network/HTTP server/SSDP, etc.

6

Thanks for your reply.
In fact I have been watching the Raspberry with envious eyes, but I am not a linux kinda guy. Isn’t the Hydra fast enough to perform the additional tasks (on different threads) next to serving audio data chuncks to the music module?

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It could be fast enough but VS1053 doesn’t support 192KHz and hydra does not have USB host so no mass storage, no usb DAC etc.

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The Spider does have USB host, but I think it only supports mass storage and hid. I don’t see any reference to usb audio in the spec.

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Fez Spider is just a board with an EMX module and some headers. So yes, it has USB host (and not only mass storage) but as I said, on my EMX music player I can get it to stream high bitrate music files while doing UI in the same time. Internet Radio (<96kbps) works fine and music files up to 320 kbps (in the best case scenario). I don’t recommend using it if you want more.

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Have you source for me? I am look for internet radio.