Sound File Formats Supported in Bedrock Resource Packs

Bedrock's audio subsystem recognizes three file extensions inside the RP/sounds/ directory: .ogg, .wav, and .fsb. When you register a sound in RP/sounds/sound_definitions.json, you omit the file extension from the path, and the game automatically resolves the matching file at runtime. If two files share the same path with different extensions, the engine's resolution order is not guaranteed, so keep only one format per sound asset.

In production add-ons, Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) is the standard format for both short sound effects and long music tracks. Uncompressed Waveform Audio (.wav) is useful during rapid prototyping because it exports quickly from digital audio workstations, but it bloats pack download sizes and RAM usage. FMOD Sound Bank (.fsb) files are present in the vanilla game resources for legacy reasons; while the engine still decodes them, creators should avoid generating new .fsb files because Ogg Vorbis offers the same runtime behavior with a much simpler toolchain.

Even when a file has a valid .ogg or .wav extension, the internal stream must use an encoding profile that Bedrock's FMOD configuration can parse. For .ogg files, the audio stream must be encoded with the Vorbis codec. Ogg containers holding Opus or FLAC streams are not supported and will fail to play without throwing a content log error.

For .wav files, export using standard uncompressed 16-bit signed integer PCM. Floating-point WAV files (32-bit float), 24-bit PCM, and ADPCM-compressed WAV files frequently produce burst static or complete silence across different target devices, particularly on mobile and console platforms.

Stick to a sample rate of 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz for standard assets. For low-frequency ambient rumbles or simple retro sound effects, you can drop the sample rate to 22050 Hz to reduce the file footprint. Avoid sample rates above 48000 Hz; they provide no audible benefit inside the game engine and increase both memory consumption and CPU resampling overhead.

The channel layout of your audio file directly controls how Bedrock spatializes the sound in the 3D world. Any sound that is meant to originate from a specific coordinate—such as an entity attack, a custom block interaction, or a localized ambient emitter—must be exported as a single-channel (mono) file. The engine takes that mono signal and pans it across the player's left and right speakers while applying distance attenuation.

If you feed a two-channel (stereo) file into a positional sound event, FMOD will not spatialize it properly. In most cases, a stereo file plays at full volume in both ears regardless of how far the player walks from the source, making it sound as if the audio is inside the player's head. Reserve stereo files strictly for non-positional audio: background music tracks, boss arena themes, and 2D user interface clicks.

How you encode a file ties directly into how you declare it in RP/sounds/sound_definitions.json. By default, Bedrock decodes sound files into memory when they are needed so they can be triggered with zero latency and played concurrently in multiple places. This works well for short mono .ogg files under a few seconds long, but a four-minute stereo music track decoded into raw PCM in memory will consume tens of megabytes of RAM and risk crashing low-memory devices.

For long audio files—typically music tracks, custom music discs, or long ambient loops exceeding five to ten seconds—you must enable streaming by setting "stream": true on the sound entry. Streaming reads the compressed .ogg file from disk in small chunks as it plays. For mobile compatibility, pair "stream": true with "load_on_low_memory": true if the sound is essential, or omit it so low-RAM devices can safely skip loading heavy background audio. Note that file paths in this JSON omit the .ogg or .wav extension.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.20",
  "sound_definitions": {
    "mob.custom_golem.step": {
      "category": "neutral",
      "max_distance": 16.0,
      "sounds": [
        "sounds/mob/custom_golem/step1",
        "sounds/mob/custom_golem/step2"
      ]
    },
    "music.custom_dungeon.ambient_loop": {
      "category": "music",
      "sounds": [
        {
          "name": "sounds/music/dungeon_loop",
          "stream": true,
          "volume": 0.8,
          "load_on_low_memory": true
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

When exporting .ogg or .wav files from audio editors like Audacity, Reaper, or FL Studio, always strip embedded metadata tags and album artwork. ID3 tags, Vorbis comments containing large binary cover art, or proprietary DAW project chunks at the head of a file can corrupt the header offset that Bedrock's audio loader expects. When this happens, the file fails to play silently.

If an audio file refuses to play despite having the right path and definition, re-export it through a clean conversion pass with metadata cleared, 16-bit PCM (for WAV) or quality level 4 to 6 Vorbis (for OGG), and verify the channel count before testing again in-game.

Applies to all modern Minecraft Bedrock versions (format_version 1.14.0 through 1.20.20 and later). No experimental toggles are required.

Read out of the game itself, so the ids match the version you are building for.