SoundSystem

SoundSystem

Build a real sound system and a full stage light show, block by block, in Minecraft. SoundSystem turns your world into a working festival or club setup: DJ decks fed by SoundCloud, modular speaker stacks with real DSP, DMX-style lighting, and pyro effects — all wired together with invisible cabling instead of redstone.

SoundSystem 2 needs a second mod: SoundSystem Lib (under review for now...). The Lib is the sound engine (SoundCloud playback, decoding, synchronisation, the physics of sound) and carries the animated guide. Put both jars in mods/. Details in Requirements below.

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Learn as you go

The in-game Guide book (find it in the creative inventory) is a full tutorial: 5 chapters, 27 pages, search, read-progress tracking, and animated 3D scenes for almost every block (hold W over an item to open its scene directly, just like Create's Ponder). It comes in English and French, following the game's language. A dedicated Recipes menu shows every craftable item laid out like a crafting table. Everything is craftable from vanilla Minecraft materials — iron, redstone, note blocks, fireworks, no exotic ingredients.

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What you can build

DJ booth — A DJ Computer holds your tracks (SoundCloud links, single tracks or whole playlists) and queues them. The DJ Table (2 blocks long) mixes with a crossfader or an automatic beat-matched fade. There are five tables, and you level up by crafting the next one from the old one — its tracks and settings stay:

• Level 1 — 2 decks, one effect per deck, loops of 4 sizes, cue points, time jump
• Level 2 — 4 decks, 2 effect units, auto gain
• Level 3 — 4 decks, a rhythmic effect and a colour effect per channel, IN / OUT loops
• Level 4 — 4 decks, beat loops, a track list with search
• Level 5 — 4 decks, 4 effect units, a track list with covers

Move tracks between computers with a USB stick, and pre-listen on a pair of wearable headphones.

Sound engineering — Monitors, subwoofers, tops and line arrays, each with a real range and frequency response. Speakers of the same kind merge into clusters up to 3×3 when they touch. Chain a Processor (EQ, delay, limiter) and an Amplifier between the deck and the speakers, and measure your coverage with the Analyzer (level meter, spectrum, coverage map, rangefinder). Sound travels like sound: it fades with distance, bass goes through walls better than treble, it takes time to arrive, and rooms have reverb.

Light show — A Show Console drives LED and strobe panels, light/laser/strobe projectors, and smoke machines, automatically synced to the beat. Flip it to PRO mode for full DMX-style control: patch every fixture to its own universe and address, build cues, and run a sequence.

Pyro — Flame projectors (real-looking fire jets, no block damage), confetti cannons (confetti or streamers, in your chosen palette), and firework launchers (5 shell types: fountain, candles, burst, willow, ring — adjustable height, size and blast count). Everything is purely visual: nothing burns, nothing breaks. One button on the console, FX OFF, holds back every effect at once for rehearsals.

Decor — Modular stage tables and flight cases (they work like chests and join up to 3 wide) to dress the venue and hold your gear.

No redstone, no visible wires

Every device is wired with the Linking Tool (click two blocks to connect them, sneak-click to undo) and turned to face any direction with the Aim Tool. Hover any control on any screen and it explains itself. Nothing is broadcast over the network except the show's timeline — no audio or video is ever sent — so a big event stays light on the server; every player decodes their own music and renders their own lights.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1, Fabric Loader 0.16.14+
• Fabric API
• SoundSystem Lib — required. SoundSystem 2.0.0 needs Lib 0.0.1 or newer; if yours is too old, the game tells you which version to get
• Ponder is included in the Lib (with Flywheel and Forge Config API Port inside it): there is nothing else to install for the animated guide. If you already have Ponder or Create, the newest version is the one used
• Works with Sodium and Iris, with or without shader packs

On a server, put both jars on the server and on every player's client.

Coming from SoundSystem 1.x?

• Your worlds keep working: blocks, saved data and network behaviour are unchanged.
• Add SoundSystem Lib next to the mod, and install Fabric API — it is no longer bundled inside the mod.
• The first time the Lib starts, it takes over your sound settings from config/soundsystem.json into its own config/soundsystemlib.json.
• Music is no longer loaded through LavaPlayer: the Lib has its own SoundCloud client and its own decoder, with no third-party library.

What is the Lib for?

SoundSystem is split in two on purpose. SoundSystem is the content: blocks, items, screens, the guide. SoundSystem Lib is the engine under it: it finds and decodes the music from a SoundCloud link, keeps every player's sound on the same timeline, and works out what each player hears from the speakers around them. Because the Lib knows no blocks, other mods can use it to play music in their own world — and when SoundCloud changes something, the fix is a new Lib release, without touching the mod.

Config highlights

Two files, created on first start; missing fields get their default value.

config/soundsystem.json (the mod): quality presets (low/medium/high) for LED resolution, beam segments and smoke particles, fluid quality for smoke and flames, beam opacity (turn it down if a shader pack makes beams too glaring), the synchronisation margin between players, and sliders for speaker range and for how much bass and treble go through obstacles — tune it for a small setup or a 50-player festival.

config/soundsystemlib.json (the Lib): the longest playlist accepted, how many media players a client plays at once, and switches for reverb, propagation delay and speaker distortion.

Commands

• /soundsystem stats — what the mod is costing your server, live
• /soundsystem festival — spawns a full test rig in front of you to stress-test your setup

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Music is loaded from public SoundCloud links; the mod doesn't ship or host any audio itself. Tracks that SoundCloud protects with DRM can't be played. Creative mode only for now.