Just kidding! The LM386 has its place — on the breadboard, in the one-off perfboarded circuit, or even free-formed with parts hanging off of it in mid-air. And as the granddaddy of DIP-format ...

along with a low-cost condenser microphone with a transistor-based preamplifier and an LM386 op-amp for the speaker circuit. In the ESP32 module the built-in DAC and ADC are used for audio in and ...