Luidr, you going to have to forgive my ignorance on this one but I've never really worked with a separate "board" like this. I have one on order now but I was just curious how something can work without the Arduino? I mean, I have an Arduino, so do I use the Arduino to "program" the Adafruit board? And then the VS1053 can just run and play the files on certain trigger events? Or do I always have to have it connected to an Arduino of some sort? In the tutorial on their page I don't think they show it in "standalone" mode.
I have used an Arduino to "program" an ATTINY85 chip and made a custom PCB for that (to make an LED-dimmer for a coffee table), so I've "burned" a chip before, but there were coherent instructions and examples for me to follow on that one--just wondering if I need to order something like a nano or mini to put this thing in place permanently?