Changelog

0.3.0-beta.3

The final beta of this round: the Boombox, stations, queue and playlists, and a new look and sound for the Speaker. For Minecraft 26.2 and 1.21.1; other targets stay at 0.3.0-alpha.3. The only change since the tested commits is this version number, these notes and the README.

Boombox

• Add the Boombox, a speaker you carry. It keeps playing in your inventory, on your cursor and on the ground, and carries on where it was after a relog or server restart.
• Its controls are the Speaker's. Sneak and use it to switch it on or off.
• It tunes to stations, staying in step with every speaker on them.
• With ownerOnlySpeakers, what plays on a station is up to its creator and operators, whichever speaker or boombox is tuned to it.
• Tuning a speaker to a station no longer restarts the sound for everyone listening.
• Sound comes back right after changing dimension.

Speaker screen

• Replace the grey vanilla buttons and slider with steel ones, keeping the panel.
• Add previous and next track buttons, and a Selected panel with the full track name, length and size.
• The main button plays the selected track, instead of pausing the current one.
• Mark the playing track in the list, and show tooltips for long names.
• Explain an empty library, a search with no results, buffering and unavailable tracks.
• Scroll the list with the mouse wheel.
• One Esc closes the screen even from the search box, and it closes by itself when you walk away or the Speaker is gone.

Speaker block

• Show a playing state: the cone pulses and a green light stays bright in the dark.

Sound

• Walls and water now muffle speakers instead of only making them quieter, unless Sound Physics Remastered is installed. The strength is untested by ear.
• Fade in and out on play, pause, stop and seek.
• Stop game music while a speaker is audible.
• Fix pausing a singleplayer game leaving audio permanently behind and cutting tracks off early: the playback clock now stops with the game.
• Restart a speaker that falls out of step with the clock, as after a network stall.

World

• Redstone controls the speaker by side, and comparators read track progress.
• Parrots and allays dance to speakers, and sculk sensors hear them start and stop.
• Note particles and a new level meter in the screen follow the music's loudness.

Stations and playlists

• Add a queue with repeat, shuffle, previous and next. Tracks play on by themselves.
• Add playlists, credited with their creator's name and head.
• Add named stations: tune several speakers to one and they stay in step. Existing speakers keep playing, on a private station of their own.
• Operators can add a link and delete tracks from the screen, with live progress.
• Add the ownerOnlySpeakers and anyoneCanAddTracks server settings.

Also

• Show "Now Playing" when the Speaker screen closes if a track started behind it, since the screen hid the line for its whole 3 seconds.

Test evidence

• Target: Minecraft 26.2, NeoForge 26.2.0.93, Java 25, and Minecraft 1.21.1, NeoForge 21.1.235, Java 21, both tested on macOS on Apple Silicon.
• Automated tests and the scripted checklist (neoforge/driver/checklist) pass on both in the real client and on a dedicated server.
• Boombox, with two clients on a dedicated server, on both targets: the same sound carried on through a change of slot, the cursor, sorting into another slot, dropping and picking up. It switched off and on, resumed after a relog at the point it had reached, followed its holder through the Nether, and stayed tuned through a server restart.
• Playback clocks between the two clients stayed within 5 ms on a station and after a relog within 18 ms; a client joining while the track played was off by up to 114 ms until its next restart. This compares playback clocks, not the sound itself.
• A player without permission, tuned in by boombox with ownerOnlySpeakers, couldn't stop or skip a station, and could run the boombox's own station.

Not tested

• Nobody has listened to this build, including muffling and the boombox moving around.
• Windows and Linux, and two computers over a real network.
• Multi-hour sessions, and many boomboxes on one server.
• In-game tool install, YouTube links and the music folder weren't run again this round.

Known issues

• A boombox in a chest or another container is silent until someone takes it out.
• In creative mode the server can't see the cursor, so a boombox held there longer than 5 seconds goes quiet until it's put down.

0.3.0-beta.2

First published beta, for Minecraft 26.2 and 1.21.1. Other targets stay at 0.3.0-alpha.3. The 0.3.0-beta.1 tags pointed at the wrong commits, so the release checks rejected them. They produced no release and remain reserved. The only change since the tested commit is this version number and these notes.

Test evidence

• Target: Minecraft 1.21.1, NeoForge 21.1.235, Java 21, commit 65f0555, tested on macOS on Apple Silicon.
• Automated tests and the scripted checklist (neoforge/driver/checklist) pass in the real client and on a dedicated server: play, pause, resume, seek, stop, volume, several speakers, automatic stop, resource reload, rejoin, server restart, and a player without operator permission.
• Sync between two clients on one machine: a late joiner's playback clock was within 10 ms of the first player's, and 5 ms after a seek. This compares playback clocks, not the sound itself.
• In-game tool install, YouTube link and music folder import pass on this target.

Not tested

• Nobody has listened to this build, including the volume slider change.
• Windows and Linux, including the tool downloads on those systems.
• Two computers over a real network, and multi-hour sessions.
• /phonon tools update, allowToolInstall=false, and non-default audioQuality.

Known issues

• Pausing a singleplayer game may leave audio behind the playback clock. This is suspected from the code and hasn't been measured.
• On 1.21.1, resource reload can log Stop: Invalid name parameter. Playback recovers.

Getting started

• List the Speaker in the creative menu, unlock its recipe on picking up a jukebox, and add a first advancement.
• Offer to install yt-dlp, FFmpeg and Deno from chat when an operator needs them, using pinned builds with verified checksums, then retry the add. Turn this off with allowToolInstall. Add /phonon tools to see what was found and update yt-dlp.
• Import audio files from phonon_music in the world folder on startup and on /phonon reload.
• /phonon add no longer needs a name or quotes: it can use the video's title.

Playback

• Follow the Jukebox/Note Blocks volume slider instead of Blocks.
• Show the vanilla "Now Playing" line when a nearby speaker starts a new track.

Messages

• Say why adding audio failed and what to do about it, instead of always blaming yt-dlp.
• Translate all GUI and command text, and add Simplified Chinese.

Fixes and settings

• Save the track list on every change, so /phonon reload no longer forgets tracks added since the server started.
• Add the audioQuality server setting.

0.3.0-alpha.3

This alpha fixes bugs reported by players. It passes compilation and automated tests on every target. Manual gameplay testing is still outstanding, so this build remains alpha.

Fixes

• Restore speaker and config screen text on targets where the game skips colours with zero alpha.
• Run yt-dlp directly instead of probing it with a 5 second limit, which could report a slow start as "not found" and block the server thread.
• Log yt-dlp's output when it fails, and the PATH when it cannot start.
• Keep the track list highlight inside the selection box on Minecraft 1.21.1 through 1.21.8.

0.3.0-alpha.1

This is an alpha build. Every target passes compilation and automated tests, and selected targets pass server or client startup smoke tests, but each published Minecraft target still requires manual in-game validation before promotion to beta.

Performance

• Move OGG page indexing from whole-file reads to bounded sequential channel reads.
• Move server audio reads off the tick thread, keep file channels open per transfer, prefetch two chunks, and schedule players fairly under global and per-player byte budgets.
• Remove repeated packet splitting and full-buffer cache assembly from client streaming.
• Decode PCM directly into OpenAL-bound buffers and retain partial Vorbis frames without reallocating native scratch memory on every fill.
• Share compressed cached OGG bytes across speakers while keeping independent decoder state.
• Replace repeated collision ray clips with staggered block traversal for acoustic occlusion.
• Cache sorted audio metadata snapshots and normalized client search keys.

Reliability and security

• Add explicit stream IDs, ordered chunks, cancellation, reference-counted shared downloads, and safe forward-only stream reuse.
• Use monotonic local playback clocks and latency-adjusted state snapshots instead of comparing wall clocks across machines.
• Validate speaker interaction distance, resource IDs, actions, seek bounds, volume, packet collection sizes, strings, headers, chunks, and sample rates.
• Validate OGG Vorbis files before registration and bound direct downloads and converted file sizes.
• Save metadata and cached streams through temporary files with atomic replacement where supported.
• Enforce the configured client cache limit and clean incomplete cache files.
• Reset server and client streaming state across disconnects, resource reloads, and repeated integrated-server lifecycles.

Build and release management

• Add exact-target release branches for Minecraft 1.21.1 through 1.21.11, 26.1, 26.1.1, 26.1.2, and 26.2; main targets 26.2.
• Pin each branch to its matching NeoForge release. Minecraft 1.21.x uses Java 21, while Minecraft 26.x uses Java 25.
• Remove unused Mixin declarations and replace the optional Cloth Config screen with a dependency-free vanilla screen.
• Add unit tests for OGG indexing, seek lookup, segmented buffering, playback clocks, metadata indexes, persistence, and stream sharing.
• Add explicit alpha, beta, and release channel mapping with version-qualified Minecraft tags and guarded GitHub publishing environments.
• Pass dedicated-server startup smoke tests on 1.21.1, 1.21.2, 1.21.4, 1.21.9, 26.1, and 26.2, plus a 26.2 client resource and audio-engine startup smoke test. The full multiplayer and playback checklist remains untested.