Bend all audio files to your will with the Adafruit Music Maker FeatherWing! It's a fun-size version of our Music Maker shield for Arduino! This powerful shield features the VS1053, an encoding/decoding (codec) chip that can decode a wide variety of audio formats such as MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, MIDI, FLAC, WAV (PCM and ADPCM). You can do all sorts of stuff with the audio as well such as adjusting bass, treble, and volume digitally.

All this functionality is implemented in a light-weight SPI interface so that any Feather Board can play audio from an SD card. There's also a special MIDI mode that you can boot the chip into that will read 'classic' 31250Kbaud MIDI data from the UART TX pin and act like a synth/drum machine - there are dozens of built-in drum and sample effects!

CircuitPython does not support MP3 or other audio-file playback on the VS1053. MIDI playback does work with CircuitPython. See the README file in the VS1053 CircuitPython library for more information: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_VS1053#introduction

What a great musical add-on to your Feather! That's why we spun up this super FeatherWing, perfect for use with any of our Feather Boards! Music (MP3) playback testing working with all Feathers. MIDI playback works with all Feathers but you may need to remove the 'Wing during programming and also for USB-Serial Feathers like the ESP8266 and nRF52 you'll end up re-using the main Serial console for MIDI which can be confusing.

We even made two versions. One version has headphone jack output, so you can listen directly or connect to an audio amp. The other version has a built in stereo amplifier that can driver 4-8 ohm speakers, up to 3W per channel!

Here are some specs:

  • Features the VS1053B codec chip - decodes Ogg Vorbis, MP3/MP2/MP1, MP4, AAC, WMA, FLAC, WAV/PCM, MIDI.
  • Stereo audio out with proper audio filter caps and ground reference so it can be safely connected directly to headphones, a stereo system or other powered speakers
  • MicroSD card socket, for any FAT16/FAT32 formatted SD card from 64MB or greater
  • Built in MIDI synth/drum machine with dozens of instruments
  • Headphone 3.5mm stereo line level or stereo audio out to any 4ohm speakers (3W max) or 8 ohm speakers (1W max), class D output

Each order comes with one tested FeatherWing, and two sticks of 0.1" male headers to plug it into your Feather and terminal blocks if you have the Amplifier version. Some light soldering is required to attach the through-hole headers to the PCB for plugging into your Feather Board. Headphones, speakers, SD card and Feather Board not included!

This guide was first published on Dec 14, 2016. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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