I have the same thoughts about the approach, and I'm actually working (on the back burner) a similar thing. It's a harman kardon "smart" speaker with a similar design where the brains are on a separate daughterboard and that's now fried.
I've already figured out the control signals and have designed a new daugterboard with an ESP32 to drive the I2S output. I just need to figure out how to downmix the audio to mono and to DSP the L/R channels into tweeter/bass outputs, or to find some code already out there that does this. Any help/pointers here would be appreciated!
One thing you might find helpful is to prototype things with GNU Radio and a GRC flowgraph. I'm not sure that would be useful for running on the ESP32, but you could at least tinker around with signal processing tactics that you could implement on it.
I've already figured out the control signals and have designed a new daugterboard with an ESP32 to drive the I2S output. I just need to figure out how to downmix the audio to mono and to DSP the L/R channels into tweeter/bass outputs, or to find some code already out there that does this. Any help/pointers here would be appreciated!