Custom Block Sound Groups and Action Sounds in the Sounds Mod

guide

The Sounds mod lets you control a wide range of sound effects through its config interface, including custom block sound groups defined in resource packs, a list of blocks to leave untouched, and action sounds for things like bows, ender pearls, frost walker, and redstone components.

Custom Block Sound Groups

Block sounds are handled through resource packs rather than through the mod's own menus. If you want to change how a block sounds, you do it by defining sound settings in a pack.

Within a pack, you can assign sound settings to a tag of blocks. Every block inside that tag receives the settings you define for the group. For each group you can configure:

Should this sound be played? — turns the sound on or off for that group.
The sound event ID — the identifier used to play the sound in game.
The volume — how loud the sound is.
The pitch — lower values give a deeper tone, higher values give a sharper, squeakier tone.
Item/block/action dependency — whether the sound event used depends on the specific item, block, or action involved. For items and blocks, the game picks the event based on what kind of item or block it is.

You can preview a sound effect before committing to it. If a preview fails, or if a sound fails to play, the mod reports that an error occurred and asks whether the sound event ID is valid.

Two settings let you opt out of custom block audio:

Disable All Modified Block Sounds — turns off every block sound changed through resource packs, so the game's default block sounds are used instead.
ignoredBlocks — a list of blocks that receive no custom sound settings, even when they belong to a tag that has settings applied.

For troubleshooting, Enable Verbose Sound Type Logging writes detailed information about block sound types to the console.

Action Sounds

Beyond blocks, the mod covers sounds tied to specific actions and items. These include:

Pulling back a bow, and attacking with a sword.
Throwing an ender pearl. Enable Enderpearl Variety randomizes the throw sound and makes it more consistent with the chorus fruit teleport sound.
Frost walker boots freezing water.
Interacting with a redstone repeater (Change Repeater Delay), a daylight detector (Change Daylight Detector Mode), and fueling a furnace minecart.
Inserting or removing a music disc from a jukebox.
Filling a flower pot with a plant, eating a slice of cake, jumping on ice, snapping a lead off a mob, and hearing a baby chicken chirp.
Wolves howling when a full moon is out.

Inventory, Chat, and Status Effect Sounds

The mod also plays sounds for inventory and interface actions: scrolling the inventory or hotbar, dragging an item between slots, clicking an item, opening or closing an inventory screen, using a scrollbar, typing in the anvil name field or creative search bar, picking a block, cloning an item, deleting an item via the creative bin, and dropping an item.

Related options include Ignore Empty Hotbar Slots and Ignore Empty Inventory Slots, which skip silent slots when playing sounds. Note that the hotbar drop sound is covered by the inventory slot option rather than the hotbar option.

For chat, you can set keywords that trigger a mention sound, ignore system messages, and play sounds for receiving messages, being mentioned, and typing or deleting characters. Cooldowns are available for both item sounds (Enable Item Sound Cooldown with Item Sound Cooldown in seconds) and chat sounds (chatSoundCooldown), with typing sounds exempt from the chat cooldown.

Status effect sounds cover gaining or losing positive and negative effects, and Ignore Silenced Status Effects skips effects with no HUD icon.

Interface Notes

Hide Button In Sound Mixer Menu controls whether the Sounds button appears in the vanilla sound mixer screen to open the config.

If both the QualitySounds and Sounds mods are present, a warning titled Incompatability Detected appears. It asks you to remove QualitySounds, since Sounds already covers its effects and features; running both causes mixin conflicts, duplicated sounds, and possible crashes.