How to enable or configure AEC and other audio processing features?

[kklemon]

The wiki states that the ReSpeaker Lite supports AEC and other ASR-related algorithms via the XU316 audio chip. However, there is no documentation on how to enable or configure these features. I'm using the ReSpeaker Lite in I2S mode with an ESP32. When I play back the microphone input in real time, there doesn't seem to be any echo cancellation or noise suppression.

[littlepcgogogo]

I also found that they do not support AEC function! There are not any engineer in their company to solve this problem for two years!

[herve-clawd]

Hey! I hit the same thing this week with an ESP32-S3 + ReSpeaker Lite running the v1.1.0 ch0-asr_ch1-mww factory I2S firmware. AEC actually does work on the XU316 — the trap is that the factory default for ch0 is the AGC tap point, which is the full chain AEC + IC + NS + AGC, and that AGC at the end pumps the small AEC residual back up to clearly audible level. So it sounds like AEC isn't running, but it is — it's just being undone one stage later. Move ch0 down to the NS tap (AEC + IC + NS, no AGC) and the echo basically disappears.

The XU316 exposes the per-channel pipeline tap over its XMOS Command Transport Protocol on I2C (XU316 sits at address 0x42 on the same I2C bus you can scan from the ESP32 — the AIC3204 codec is at 0x18 on that same bus, not behind the XMOS). Same protocol the ESPHome voice_kit component speaks.

Resource ID 0xF1 (CONFIG), command per channel:

• 0x30 — ch0 pipeline tap point
• 0x40 — ch1 pipeline tap point

Value is cumulative (each stage includes the earlier ones):

value	tap point
0	NONE — raw mic
1	AEC
2	AEC + IC (2-mic beamforming)
3	AEC + IC + NS
4	AEC + IC + NS + AGC ← factory default for ch0

Wire format:

• Write: [0xF1, 0x30, 0x01, value]
• Read : write [0xF1, 0x30 | 0x80, 0x02], then receive 2 bytes [status, value] (status 0 means OK)

After writing, give it ~50 ms and read back to confirm. The setting persists in XMOS flash, so one write at boot is enough — re-running it is idempotent.

Hope this unblocks you.