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Synth sound and music

Free packv3.0.0-6AudioUpdated

Sound effects, chiptune music, recorded samples and streamed soundtracks on `game.sound`. You define each sound once by name, as a synth spec, a layered set of specs or a file, and play it by name everywhere, while the pack looks after the browser's unlock, the pause and the mix.

This is a Free pack. Every phaser.io account can use it in their games.

Released October 14, 2026 · updated October 24, 2026

Synth sound and music: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

A sound is a SoundSpec: a sine, square, sawtooth or triangle wave, or white, pink or brown noise, with a frequency sweep, an envelope, a pulse width, vibrato, tremolo, a filter that can sweep, distortion, bit-crush, echo and pan. Specs layer into one compound sound. Notes can be written in a compact jingle notation at a tempo, and an array of voices in that notation is a tune that loop plays back to back, joined sample-exactly, as background music. A whole arcade soundscape can be a page of data, with no audio files to make or load.

The name is the contract. You define shoot once and call game.sound.play('shoot') from a collision, a state's enter hook or a game-feel moment. An unknown name throws while you develop, listing the names the pack has, so a typo shows at once rather than as silence. Recorded effects load with the rest of the game's files and are decoded under the loading screen, so their first play sounds at once. Music is kept as a file and streamed on its own bus.

The engine owns the timing. Sound unlocks on the player's first key, click or touch, and music asked for before that starts on that gesture, so a title screen can ask for its music as it opens. Audio suspends when the game pauses and, by default, when the page is hidden. musicTime gives the seconds into the track as heard, with the output latency the browser reports taken off, for visuals timed to the beat. Headless, every method is a no-op and musicTime counts game time, so a beat-timed title behaves the same in a test.

Features

  • Sounds by name — define, defineAll or the sounds option; play returns a function that stops the sound early.
  • A synth in a spec — sweeps, a full ADSR envelope, pulse width for classic chip timbres, vibrato, tremolo, swept filters, distortion, bit-crush, echo, pan and per-play pitch jitter.
  • Jingle notation and tunes — notes, chords, hits, rests, stretched steps, accents and ghost notes, and voices looped together as background music; a token the parser does not recognise costs a note, not the rhythm.
  • Recorded samples — preloaded and decoded with the game's assets, played with sample at a volume, rate and pan, or on a loop.
  • Sound in a 3D world — play a sound at a place and it pans and fades with distance from the listener; voices follow what makes them.
  • Streamed music — one track at a time, from a loaded file or a URL, with fadeIn, fadeOut and crossfade.
  • Three buses — master, music and sfx, each with its own volume, and mute and unmute commands.
  • Beat timing — musicTime and musicDuration, for landing a logo on the downbeat or pulsing a light.
  • A mix other packs can use — video sound routed into a bus, a live track of the mix for recording clips, and its waveform for audio-driven visuals.

Good for

  • Arcade and chiptune games — shots, zaps, explosions, pickups and jingles made from specs, with no audio files.
  • Prototypes and game jams — a sound is a line of data, so a game has sound from its first hour.
  • Games with recorded sound — effects that play at once on first use, and a soundtrack that cross-fades between levels.
  • Title screens timed to music — a logo that lands on the downbeat and lights that pulse with the beat.
  • Music-reactive visuals — light shows and backgrounds that read the mix's waveform.

Make it yours

Every sound is data: a square wave with a falling sweep for a laser, a swept lowpass over noise for an explosion, a chord with an accent for a fanfare. The pack's options set the master volume (masterVolume, 0.25 by default), define sounds at start-up (sounds) and decide whether audio suspends while the page is hidden (suspendWhenHidden). In play, volume sets each bus, which is all a settings screen needs.

Two very different uses: a chiptune arcade game in which every effect is a spec and the music is a three-voice tune in notation, looped, with nothing to download; and a game with recorded effects loaded as files and a streamed soundtrack that fades in on the title and cross-fades to a boss track, with separate music and effects sliders.

A quick look

Synthesised effects, a jingle, and music with a cross-fade:

game.sound.defineAll({
    shoot:   { type: 'square', freq: 880, freqEnd: 220, sweep: 'exponential', duration: 0.12, duty: 0.25 },
    boom:    { type: 'noise', duration: 0.4, filter: { type: 'lowpass', freq: 1800, freqEnd: 200 }, curve: 'exponential', volume: 0.8 },
    fanfare: { notes: 'C5 E5 G5 C6:2', step: 0.1, type: 'square' },
});
game.sound.play('shoot');
game.sound.music('music/dusk.mp3', { loop: true, fadeIn: 2 });
game.sound.music('music-boss', { crossfade: 1.5 });   // the dusk track fades out as this fades in
game.sound.volume('sfx', 0.6);                        // buses: master · music · sfx

Works with

  • core-2d, core-3d and core-vector — include this pack, so most games have it already.
  • video — sends its clips' sound through the mix, so the bus volumes and mute cover it.
  • title-screen — starts its music and plays its Start sound through this pack.
  • trippatron — follows the master mix for light shows that pulse to the music.
  • fsm and feel — the state enter hooks and game-feel moments where a game usually plays its sounds.

Good to know

  • Browsers allow sound only after the first key, click or touch: an effect played before that is dropped and music waits for it, so do not put the title jingle on boot.
  • Positional sound pans and fades with distance, with no occlusion, echo by room or Doppler; music is one track at a time with an optional cross-fade from the last.
  • An unknown name is an error only in development; in a shipped game it is silent.
  • volume changes a bus at once, with no fade, and a looped tune is scheduled on a timer, so a tab left in the background may leave a gap when it wakes.
  • A long track loaded without stream is decoded into memory; mark music as stream.

Changes

3.0.0-6 (2026-10-24)

  • Added positional sound: play, loop and sample take { at: { x, y, z } } to play a sound at a place in a 3D world, panned and fading with distance from the listener, which you move with the camera. A voice can move to follow what makes it, and volume scales any sound.