VS1011e is a single-chip MPEG audio decoder. The chip contains a high-performance, low-power DSP processor core VS DSP4, working memory, 5 KiB instruction RAM and 0.5 KiB data RAM for user applications, serial control and input data interfaces, 4 general purpose I/O pins, as well as a high-quality variable-sample-rate stereo DAC, followed by an earphone amplifier and a common buffer.

VS1011e receives its input bitstream through a serial input bus, which it listens to as a system slave. The input stream is decoded and passed through a digital volume control to an 18-bit oversampling, multi-bit, sigma-delta DAC. The decoding is controlled via a serial control bus. In addition to basic decoding, it is possible to add application specific features, like DSP effects, to the user RAM memory.