feat(audio): Ctrl+M instant mute + inn-chatter investigation closed as server content

Two items from listening-gate round 2.

Mute: AcdreamToggleAudioMute (default Ctrl+M; bare M is selection) flips
OpenAlAudioEngine.Muted, implemented as the AL LISTENER gain - unused
since A2 moved all mixing to the CPU, so it is a free master switch that
silences already-playing voices instantly and restores them exactly,
without touching the retail mixing math, the -50 dB allocation cutoff, or
any persisted volume setting. Rebindable like every other action; console
line confirms each flip.

Inn chatter: the user hears talk-and-laughter ambience in retail inns and
not in acdream. Three installed-dat scans (pinned as conformance tests in
EnvCellSoundEmitterInventoryTests) prove the mechanism is NOT client
data: no interior static in the town landblock carries an ambient-slot
sound table, no Setup among all 5,935 in the portal dat references one,
and yet 23 sound tables carrying ONLY Ambient1..8 slots exist - pure
soundscape banks with nothing client-side pointing at them. They are
wire-bound: the server attaches one to an emitter object via
CreateObject's sound-table field and fires the slots over 0xF750 - ACE
implements exactly this (EmoteType.Sound heartbeat emotes ->
GameMessageSound broadcast). Our 0xF750 receiver (slice A3) is live and
now instrumented (ACDREAM_PROBE_SOUND_WIRE=1, via the new
AudioDiagnostics owner per Code Structure Rule 5, with per-event drop
reasons in AudioHookSink.PlayServerSound). A probed session against the
local ACE received ZERO 0xF750 events across a town walkabout: the
silence is server world-content (no emitters configured/firing), not a
client drop. The first scan's assertion originally encoded the
emitter-object hypothesis; the data refuted it, and the test now pins the
negative so the conclusion cannot silently rot.

Full Release suite green (the one failure during development was the
hypothesis-pinning assertion, corrected to pin the finding).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/AcDream.App/Audio/AudioHookSink.cs

@@ -125,14 +125,28 @@ public sealed class AudioHookSink : IAnimationHookSink
         if (!_engine.IsAvailable) return;
 
         uint tableId = _entitySoundTables.GetSoundTableId(entityId);
-        if (tableId == 0) return;
+        if (tableId == 0)
+        {
+            WireProbe(entityId, soundType, "no-sound-table");
+            return;
+        }
 
         SoundTable? table = _cache.GetSoundTable(tableId);
-        if (table is null) return;
+        if (table is null)
+        {
+            WireProbe(entityId, soundType, $"table-0x{tableId:X8}-unloadable");
+            return;
+        }
 
         var entry = SoundCookbook.Select(table, (DRWSound)soundType, _rng);
-        if (entry is null) return;
+        if (entry is null)
+        {
+            WireProbe(entityId, soundType, "slot-missing-or-gate-silence");
+            return;
+        }
 
+        WireProbe(entityId, soundType,
+            $"play wave=0x{(uint)entry.Id:X8} pos=({worldPosition.X:F0},{worldPosition.Y:F0},{worldPosition.Z:F0})");
         Play(
             entityId, worldPosition,
             waveId: (uint)entry.Id,
@@ -140,6 +154,13 @@ public sealed class AudioHookSink : IAnimationHookSink
             priority: entry.Priority);
     }
 
+    private static void WireProbe(uint entityId, uint soundType, string outcome)
+    {
+        if (!AudioDiagnostics.ProbeWireSoundsEnabled) return;
+        Console.WriteLine(FormattableString.Invariant(
+            $"[sound-wire] local=0x{entityId:X8} slot=0x{soundType:X2} {outcome}"));
+    }
+
     /// <summary>
     /// Play a sound-bearing animation hook through the INTERFACE bus — from
     /// centre, distance 0, unaffected by the world-audio suspension that

src/AcDream.App/Audio/OpenAlAudioEngine.cs

@@ -137,6 +137,26 @@ public sealed unsafe class OpenAlAudioEngine : IAudioEngine, IWorldAudioQuiescen
 
     // ── Public volume knobs ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
     public float MasterVolume { get; set; } = 1f;
+
+    private bool _muted;
+
+    /// <summary>
+    /// Instant all-voices mute. Implemented as the AL LISTENER gain — unused
+    /// since A2 moved all mixing to the CPU, so it is a free master switch
+    /// that silences already-playing voices immediately and restores them
+    /// exactly, without touching the retail mixing math, the −50 dB
+    /// allocation cutoff, or any persisted volume setting.
+    /// </summary>
+    public bool Muted
+    {
+        get => _muted;
+        set
+        {
+            _muted = value;
+            if (_available && _al is not null)
+                _al.SetListenerProperty(ListenerFloat.Gain, value ? 0f : 1f);
+        }
+    }
     public float SfxVolume    { get; set; } = 1f;
     public float AmbientVolume{ get; set; } = 0.8f;
     public bool  IsAvailable => _available;

src/AcDream.App/Composition/SessionPlayerComposition.cs

@@ -1178,7 +1178,17 @@ internal sealed class SessionPlayerCompositionPhase
                 new GameplayCameraModeCommands(host.CameraController),
                 gameRuntime,
                 gameRuntime.Combat,
-                new GameplayWindowCommands(d.Window.Close));
+                new GameplayWindowCommands(d.Window.Close),
+                toggleAudioMute: content.Audio?.Engine is { } audioEngine
+                    ? () =>
+                    {
+                        audioEngine.Muted = !audioEngine.Muted;
+                        Console.WriteLine(
+                            audioEngine.Muted
+                                ? "audio: muted (Ctrl+M to unmute)"
+                                : "audio: unmuted");
+                    }
+                    : null);
             var targets = new RuntimeGameplayInputPriorityTargets(
                 gameplayInput,
                 pointer,

src/AcDream.App/Input/GameplayInputCommandController.cs

@@ -151,6 +151,7 @@ internal sealed class GameplayInputCommandController : IGameplayInputCommandTarg
     private readonly IGameRuntimeView _runtimeView;
     private readonly IRuntimeCombatCommands _combat;
     private readonly IGameplayWindowCommands _window;
+    private readonly Action? _toggleAudioMute;
 
     public GameplayInputCommandController(
         IRetainedGameplayWindowCommands retained,
@@ -161,7 +162,8 @@ internal sealed class GameplayInputCommandController : IGameplayInputCommandTarg
         IGameplayCameraModeCommands camera,
         IGameRuntimeView runtimeView,
         IRuntimeCombatCommands combat,
-        IGameplayWindowCommands window)
+        IGameplayWindowCommands window,
+        Action? toggleAudioMute = null)
     {
         _retained = retained ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(retained));
         _devTools = devTools ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(devTools));
@@ -173,6 +175,7 @@ internal sealed class GameplayInputCommandController : IGameplayInputCommandTarg
             ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(runtimeView));
         _combat = combat ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(combat));
         _window = window ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(window));
+        _toggleAudioMute = toggleAudioMute;
     }
 
     public bool Handle(InputAction action)
@@ -185,6 +188,9 @@ internal sealed class GameplayInputCommandController : IGameplayInputCommandTarg
             case InputAction.ToggleInventoryPanel:
                 _retained.ToggleInventory();
                 return true;
+            case InputAction.AcdreamToggleAudioMute:
+                _toggleAudioMute?.Invoke();
+                return true;
             case InputAction.AcdreamToggleDebugPanel:
                 _devTools.ToggleDebugPanel();
                 return true;

src/AcDream.App/Rendering/Vfx/EntityEffectController.cs

@@ -120,6 +120,11 @@ public sealed class EntityEffectController : IAnimationHookSink,
     {
         if (message.Guid == 0)
             return;
+        if (AcDream.Core.Audio.AudioDiagnostics.ProbeWireSoundsEnabled)
+        {
+            Console.WriteLine(FormattableString.Invariant(
+                $"[sound-wire] recv guid=0x{message.Guid:X8} slot=0x{message.SoundType:X2} vol={message.Volume:F2}"));
+        }
         if (TryGetReadyLocalId(message.Guid, out uint localId))
         {
             RefreshLiveAnchor(message.Guid, localId);

src/AcDream.Core/Audio/AudioDiagnostics.cs

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+using System;
+
+namespace AcDream.Core.Audio;
+
+/// <summary>
+/// Diagnostic toggles for the audio subsystem, read once at startup per the
+/// Code Structure Rules (one static owner per subsystem; no per-call-site
+/// env reads).
+/// </summary>
+public static class AudioDiagnostics
+{
+    /// <summary>
+    /// One console line per inbound server Sound event (0xF750) and per
+    /// wire-sound play decision, with the drop reason when nothing plays.
+    /// Used to pin whether interior soundscapes (inn chatter — server-bound
+    /// ambient sound tables fired by emitter heartbeats) are absent because
+    /// the server never sends them or because the client drops them.
+    /// <para>Initial state from <c>ACDREAM_PROBE_SOUND_WIRE=1</c>.</para>
+    /// </summary>
+    public static bool ProbeWireSoundsEnabled { get; set; } =
+        Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("ACDREAM_PROBE_SOUND_WIRE") == "1";
+}

src/AcDream.UI.Abstractions/Input/InputAction.cs

@@ -259,6 +259,9 @@ public enum InputAction
     AcdreamSensitivityUp,
     /// <summary>F10 cycles weather.</summary>
     AcdreamCycleWeather,
+    /// <summary>Ctrl+M mutes/unmutes all audio instantly (acdream-only —
+    /// retail has no master volume, let alone a mute).</summary>
+    AcdreamToggleAudioMute,
     /// <summary>F (existing) toggles between fly camera and orbit/chase mode.</summary>
     AcdreamToggleFlyMode,
     /// <summary>Tab — currently toggles fly↔player mode (will be reassigned to ToggleChatEntry in K.1c).</summary>

src/AcDream.UI.Abstractions/Input/KeyBindings.cs

@@ -120,6 +120,7 @@ public sealed class KeyBindings
         b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.F7, ModifierMask.None), InputAction.AcdreamCycleTimeOfDay));
         b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.F8, ModifierMask.None), InputAction.AcdreamSensitivityDown));
         b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.F9, ModifierMask.None), InputAction.AcdreamSensitivityUp));
+        b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.M,  ModifierMask.Ctrl), InputAction.AcdreamToggleAudioMute));
         b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.F10, ModifierMask.None), InputAction.AcdreamCycleWeather));
         b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.F, ModifierMask.None), InputAction.AcdreamToggleFlyMode));
         b.Add(new(new KeyChord(Key.Tab, ModifierMask.None), InputAction.AcdreamTogglePlayerMode));