Inter-IC Sound Bus (I2S)

The Integrated Inter-IC Sound Bus (I2S) is a serial bus interface standard used for connecting digital audio devices together. The specification is from Philips® Semiconductor (I2S bus specification; February 1986, revised June 5, 1996).

The I2S component operates in master mode only. It also operates in two directions, as a transmitter (Tx) and a receiver (Rx). The data for Tx and Rx are independent byte streams. The  byte streams are packed with the most significant byte first and the most significant bit in bit 7 of  the first word. The number of bytes used for each sample (a sample for the left or right channel)  is the minimum number of bytes to hold a sample.