Positional sounds become significantly quieter or even inaudible when positioned behind the player's view.

Any sort of sound that is positioned in the world and not ambient will become noticeably quieter when positioned behind the player’s view, resulting in the sounds of walking being completely silent when the player is simply looking up, or the sound of them taking damage being all but muted if they’re looking down. This effects many of the sounds in the game like elytra gliding, eating food, using a spear’s jab attack, taking damage, walking, explosions, and basically anything else that isn’t the music or an ambient sound.

To reproduce the issue, move the player camera around and make sure to look away while a positional sound is playing. One of the easiest sounds to notice this with is gliding with the elytra. When gliding, simply look down, and the faster you’re gliding, the more choppy the sound will become.

Before the infamous “GDK update” (1.21.130) these sound issues were not present, and you would hear the sound of gliding or eating or taking damage as normal regardless of the position of your camera.

After this update, the sounds can get cut short or even go completely unheard as shown in the video below.