Sounds

Sounds

AET provides armor equip and unequip sounds, item sounds, enhanced thunder, and optional Dynamic Surroundings animal ambience muting. These sound features work on the client without AET on the server.

Starting with AET 0.0.13, armor movement sounds and wet footsteps in rain have moved to Past Footsteps, together with footprints. See Moving to Past Footsteps for setup and migration details.

Configuration guide · All categories

Thunder

Config category: thunder. GUI: Sounds → Thunder.

Replaces vanilla thunder with six recordings from modern Dynamic Surroundings. The sounds play at the original strike position and retain the original audible range. This works entirely on the client and does not require Dynamic Surroundings or a server installation.

Setting	Default	Range or format	Effect
thunderSoundsEnabled	true	true / false	Enable the replacement recordings. Disabling stops any replacement thunder still playing and restores normal thunder for subsequent strikes.
thunderSoundVolume	1.0	0.0 to 1.0	Volume multiplier for replacement thunder, also scaled by Minecraft's Weather volume. Zero mutes thunder while the replacement is enabled. Changing volume does not change audible range.

Volume changes also affect replacement thunder already playing. The recordings play at their original pitch, with no additional propagation delay. Lightning visuals, gameplay effects, and AET's existing camera shakes continue as before. This option is independent of the animal ambience mute below.

Item sounds

Config category: item_sounds. GUI: Sounds → Item sounds.

Adds Dynamic Surroundings accents for sword and tool swings, selecting held items, and drawing bows. Works entirely on the client without Dynamic Surroundings or AET on the server. Swings play when an arm swing is accepted, including misses and animation restarts. Pointing at a block suppresses the swing accent. Starting to block can also play an accent. These are movement sounds, not confirmation that an attack dealt damage.

Item selection sounds apply to players. Other living entities can produce swing sounds when the server synchronizes their arm animations. Nearby entities are tracked within 32 blocks; sounds use normal positional attenuation. Joining a world or first encountering an entity does not play an equip sound. Item wear, stack count changes, and NBT updates do not retrigger equip sounds.

Setting	Default	Range or format	Effect
itemSwingSoundsEnabled	true	Boolean	Enable swing and blocking-start accents.
itemSwingVolume	1.0	0.0 to 1.0	Multiplier for each category's swing volume.
itemEquipSoundsEnabled	true	Boolean	Enable held-item selection sounds.
itemEquipVolume	1.0	0.0 to 1.0	Multiplier for each category's selection volume.
itemBowDrawSoundsEnabled	true	Boolean	Play a drawstring sound when a player starts using a bow or an item classified as a crossbow. Stops the sound on release or cancellation. Arrow release sounds remain unchanged.
itemBowDrawVolume	0.5	0.0 to 1.0	Bow drawstring volume.
itemSoundsForOtherEntities	true	Boolean	Include nearby players and swinging mobs. Disable for local-player sounds only.
itemUtilityEquipSoundsEnabled	true	Boolean	Generic selection sound for otherwise unclassified items, including buckets, food, and miscellaneous items. Requires selection sounds to be enabled.
itemBlockEquipSoundsEnabled	true	Boolean	Use the selected block's step sound for otherwise unclassified block items. Requires selection sounds to be enabled.
itemSoundOverrides	Empty list	modid:item=category or modid:item@metadata=category	Override automatic item classification. none silences an item.

All volume settings also respect Minecraft's Players volume. Typical sword/tool accents use a base volume of 0.5, multiplied by the configured value. Saving settings reloads the item rules and stops active bow-draw sounds; subsequent actions use the new settings.

Item categories

Category	Automatic detection	Selection / swing sounds
sword	Vanilla swords and subclasses	Sword draw / nine sword swings
axe	Axes and items declaring the Forge axe tool class	Heavy draw / five blunt swings
tool	Other tools, hoes, shears, and Forge tool classes	Tool draw / seven swooshes
bow	Bows and subclasses	Bow equip / tool swoosh; drawstring while using
crossbow	Explicit overrides	Bow equip / blunt swing; drawstring while using
shield	Explicit overrides	Tool draw / lower-pitched blocking or swing accent
potion	Potions and glass bottles	Bottle sloshing
book	Books, enchanted books, writable books, and written books	Light / heavy page turning
utility	Other items	Optional generic selection sound; blocks use the separate block option; no swing sound
none	Empty hands or explicit overrides	Silent

Crossbow and shield categories classify sounds only; they do not add gameplay behavior to an item. Buckets use the generic utility sound because 1.7.10 does not have modern Minecraft's dedicated bucket sounds.

Custom item mappings

S:itemSoundOverrides <
    modid:katana=sword
    modid:hammer=axe
    modid:multitool=tool
    modid:shared_item@7=sword
    modid:noisy_item=none
 >

Use exact registry IDs, including their letter case. Category names are case insensitive. Metadata-specific rules take priority over whole-item rules regardless of list order; the last duplicate rule wins. Damageable stacks use metadata 0 for matching so durability does not change their category. Invalid entries are ignored with a log warning. Rules for mods that are not installed can remain in the list.

Armor

Config category: armor.

These settings control armor equip and unequip sounds. Armor movement sounds are configured in Past Footsteps.

Vanilla leather maps to light, chain to medium, iron and gold to heavy, and diamond to crystal. Item overrides take priority, with the fallback category covering unknown armor. If several armor slots change in one tick, one sound is selected from the changed items in priority order: heavy, crystal, medium, then light/elytra. The elytra sound uses Et Futurum Requiem's Asset Director.

First encountering an entity establishes its equipment state silently. Changes to durability, charge, modes, or other NBT do not retrigger equip sounds. Items with metadata subtypes are distinguished by their metadata.

Setting	Default	Range or format	Effect
armorSoundsEnabled	true	true / false	Enable armor equip and unequip sounds.
armorSoundVolume	0.3	0.0 to 1.0	Volume for armor equip and unequip sounds.
armorDefaultCategory	heavy	light, medium, heavy, crystal, elytra	Default equip sound category for unknown or modded armor items.
armorCategoryOverrides	etfuturum:elytra;elytra	List of text entries	Per-item equip sound category overrides. Format: registry_name;category, for example minecraft:iron_chestplate;crystal. The elytra category uses the equip sound provided by Et Futurum Requiem's Asset Director.
armorSoundEntityWhitelist	Default list	List of text entries	Entity classes that play armor equip and unequip sounds. An empty list disables these sounds for all entities.

The former armorSoundMode setting was removed with the walking engine. Configure mixed armor movement sounds in Past Footsteps.

Default armorSoundEntityWhitelist

S:armorSoundEntityWhitelist <
    Player
    Zombie
    Skeleton
    PigZombie
 >

Rain footsteps

Rain footstep and landing accents are now provided by Past Footsteps. Configure their enable toggle, volume, and entity filters in its Rain footsteps menu. The former AET rain_splash category no longer controls these sounds; see Moving to Past Footsteps.

AET still provides rain ripples, water-entry splashes, and waterfall effects under Water effects, wetness drips under Entity effects, and breaking waves under Coastal Waves.

Dynamic Surroundings

Config category: dynamic_surroundings. GUI: Sounds → Dynamic Surroundings.

Setting	Default	Range or format	Effect
muteDynamicSurroundingsAnimalSounds	false	true / false	Mute Dynamic Surroundings animal and insect ambience, creature growls, and forest, jungle, and plains background recordings.

Enable this to remove ambient wildlife that has no visible entity producing it, including birds, owls, insects, frogs, wolves, coyotes, bison, crocodiles, snakes, elephants, primates, and whales. It also covers DS bee and insect sounds attached to blocks, cat-like hisses, and ambient monster growls. These are DS sound events; actual Minecraft mobs keep their sounds.

The forest, jungle, and plains recordings are muted in full as a precaution against embedded animal calls, so their other background audio is also removed. Weather, wind, beach and river water, underwater ambience, footsteps, armor, and player sounds remain available.

Saving the option applies it immediately and stops matching sounds already playing. Turning it off allows DS to play those sounds normally again. Dynamic Surroundings is optional; this setting has no effect when its sounds are absent.