Replace esphome-libs codecs with ESP-IDF Audio Codecs module

[PxPert]

Describe your idea

Hi,
ESPHome currently uses its own internal implementation for audio codec functions (micro-flac, micro-wav etc.). Since ESP-IDF supports the official esp_audio_codec component, which includes not only the codecs currently used by ESPHome but also additional ones, why not integrating the official esp_audio_codec component instead of relying on the custom library?

Why is this exciting?

Less custom code to mantain
Standard libraries (esp-idf)
More codecs supported
More optimized codecs?

Potential use cases

Everything that needs the audio codecs

Anything else?

No response

[ssieb]

esphome runs on more than just ESP devices.

[PxPert]

I know, but ESPHome is also designed to run optimized code for the microcontroller it’s built for. So it would be possible to wrap the ESP-IDF codecs behind the same interface and use them on ESP32s, while using the “generic ones” for all the others.
It's all a matter of conditional builds and selecting the right source code at compile time after all :)

[ssieb]

That doesn't match your reasons. We still need the custom code and we still need to add the codecs to our own internal implementation or there will be a mismatch of what codecs are available. I'm also not convinced that the codecs are going to be that much more optimized to make a difference.

[PxPert]

We still need the custom code and we still need to add the codecs to our own internal implementation or there will be a mismatch of what codecs are available

Yes, but it would open up ESP32 to many other codecs not available right now (AAC for example), without much effort. It would always be possible to limit certain codecs to ESP32 as there is already code written and limited to ESP32 platform on Esphome

I'm also not convinced that the codecs are going to be that much more optimized to make a difference.

You are right here, we'd need some tests for this.

If you agree I could try to do some tests to implement the native codecs ontop the microdecoder library, but only if you find this could be useful to just not waste time