v4.0 Alpha — Weather Audio, Occlusion Polish & Stability

✨ New

• Weather-safe streaming — MemoryAudioStream loops PCM when the buffer ends instead of returning null (avoids OpenAL reload overlap)
• Continuous ambient bypass — AsyncStreamer.isContinuousAmbientStream() keeps rain, weather, and cave ambients on vanilla OggAudioStream (no Phase 5 PCM cache for those paths)
• Occlusion 2.1 — provisional cache + async refine; player-centric raycasting (phase4.playerCentricRaycasting, default on); smoothed gain via OcclusionState / writeSmoothedGain
• LOOP_FAR priority — distant ambient/weather loops (>32 blocks) use SourcePriority.LOOP_FAR with shared maxAmbientSources budget
• Reload generation guards — reloadGeneration on SoundPreloader, AsyncStreamer, and SoundReloadListener so in-flight preloads/decode do not write after resource reload
• OcclusionApi — getOcclusionFromProvider() hook for external occlusion mods/providers
• Cloth Config lang — en_us.json tooltip for deprecated asyncWorkerThreads

⚡ Performance

• PCM replay — seamless loop for cached stream segments; fewer redundant OGG decodes on short repeatable streams
• Occlusion tick — invalidates stale pending futures when source/listener block moves; sync fallback before async refine; normalized cache path for player-centric mode
• OcclusionCache — tick-based TTL retained; provisional entries reduce “silent until ray completes” gaps
• Smart pool — deferred eviction queue (aep$deferredEvictions); getEffectiveCount() / pending-eviction accounting; position tracking with 0.01-block epsilon
• Dedup — greedy centroid clustering retained; weather path exempt so global loops are not merged/delayed
• LOD — LodPcmGenerator Lanczos resampler (anti-alias) replaces box filter; correct native byte-order on ByteBuffer.duplicate() (fixes distant mob LOD crackle)
• Preload — direct-memory headroom checks and generation-stamped async work in SoundPreloader
• Phase 3 — async tick work stays sync on render thread (~μs per sound); asyncWorkerThreads marked unused in config

🔧 Changes

• Updated: gradle.properties / docs — release line 3.0-alpha → 4.0-alpha
• Updated: SoundEngineMixinPhase4 — occlusion apply order; category scaling after occlusion; WEATHER and relative sounds skip occlusion processing
• Updated: SoundDeduplicator — weather added to dedup-exempt patterns (with block interaction sounds)
• Updated: SoundReloadListener — coordinated cache clear: PCM, session static, LOD, occlusion state, dedup/pool, AsyncStreamer.reset()
• Updated: SoundPhysicsRemasteredCompat — runtime occlusion disable when SPR is present (unchanged behavior, refined checks)
• Unchanged from 3.0: StreamingBufferQueue still not wired; SoundInstancePool still removed; Caffeine still absent

🐛 Fixes

• Duplicate rain / weather layer — second rain heard while moving or standing (PCM stream end → reload overlap + occlusion gain on listener-bound loops)
• Shared OggAudioStream corruption — per-play MemoryAudioStream with independent cursor (carried from 3.0; loop rewind completes the fix for repeatable streams)
• LOD crackle on distant sounds — wrong endian on duplicated PCM views in LodPcmGenerator
• Stale occlusion after movement — cancel pending futures and refresh cache when source/listener block changes
• Dedup replay — MergedSoundInstance never re-deferred; key counts cleared on flush
• Resource reload races — blacklist pattern swap, native buffer ownership, and in-flight preload abandonment
• Smart pool double-register — merged sounds only registered via play() injection path

⚠️ Known limitations (alpha)

• StreamingBufferQueue — implemented but not connected to SoundLoader; true decode-while-playing pipeline is future work
• Weather PCM cache — if manually cached via blacklist/config edge cases, prefer vanilla path; continuous ambients are excluded by default
• No automated tests — heavy farms/PvP may need lower globalRayBudgetPerTick, dedupThreshold, or category limits in Phase 1
• Phase 5 static path — enableStaticCaching still limited by staticCacheThresholdBytes; long streamed ambients should stay on OGG

📦 Upgrade from 3.0-alpha