Zombie Have Ears

Zombies can only hear you if you're actually making noise.

This server-side mod hooks into Simple Voice Chat to give zombies (and optionally other monsters) real hearing: whenever a player talks, nearby mobs pick up the sound and walk over to investigate where it came from. Talk quietly, whisper, or stay behind a wall — or the horde will come find you.

Hearing rules

Voice-driven, not proximity-driven. Mobs don't magically know where you are — they react to actual voice packets from Simple Voice Chat, measured for real loudness.
Loudness matters. Speak at normal volume and you're heard at a fraction of the full range; scream into the mic and the sound carries the whole distance. Quiet talkers stay safer.
Whispering is real stealth. Simple Voice Chat's whisper key drastically shrinks your hearing radius — the go-to option when a zombie is already close.
Walls muffle sound. Without direct line of sight, mobs only hear a fraction of the normal range. They never aggro through walls from sound alone.
Mobs investigate, they don't teleport-aggro. A mob that hears you walks to the sound's position and searches around for a while — it still needs to actually see you (or get close) to start attacking.
Already-hunting mobs ignore sound. A zombie chasing a target isn't distracted by voices elsewhere.

Compatible mods

Simple Voice Chat — required. This mod is a voice chat plugin: it hooks directly into SVC's microphone packets to measure real loudness, so hearing only ever reacts to actual talking, never to proximity alone.
Zombie Have Eyes — built as its natural companion. Ears bring mobs to investigate a sound; eyes decide whether they actually spot you once they arrive. Install both for zombies that behave like they can genuinely see and hear.
Zombie Awareness — fully compatible, no conflicts. ZA's blood/light/sound awareness only reacts to real Minecraft sound events; it has no visibility into Simple Voice Chat audio at all, so this mod's voice hearing is a genuinely new detection source layered on top, not a duplicate.
The Hordes — fully compatible out of the box. Horde wave mobs are automatically excluded from voice alerts, so talking near an incoming wave doesn't pull mobs off their march — they keep tracking the player exactly as The Hordes intends.
Enhanced AI — no special integration, and none is needed: Enhanced AI only affects target acquisition (Mob#setTarget), which this mod never touches — it only walks targetless mobs towards a heard sound. The two mods simply don't intersect.

Installation

Server-side only — install on the server, and clients only need Simple Voice Chat itself (no extra client mod required). Requires Simple Voice Chat 2.5.0+ on the server. Every mechanic above is tunable in config/zombiehaveears-common.toml: hearing range, loudness scaling, whisper multiplier, wall muffling, search behavior, and performance budgets (sample rate, max mobs per alert, raycast budget).

Modpacks & usage

Free to include in modpacks, no need to ask first. Credit is appreciated but not required. Commercial use (selling the mod, or bundling it in a paid/monetized modpack or product) is not covered by this — reach out to discuss it first.