Freesound Forums

I'm interested in the words members use to describe sounds. Sounds of love, passion, happiness, sadness. You get the idea. When writing, I like to describe smells but sounds are more illusive to me.

Hello there,

It's a tricky thing.

Some common words to describe sounds are : bright, dark, muddy, sharp, warm, cold, clinical, wet, reverby, harsh.

Hope that helps and that I understood the question correctly ^^'
Cheers!

If we are talking about writing tags for sounds uploaded to the site, then the question may not be simple. Try to search for similar sounds, and see what tags are already registered there. In general, somewhere all this is subjective, but of course there is a certain established vocabulary among people from sound recording and sound design. There is also a standard sound cataloging system which is also very helpful. Everything related to it is here:
https://universalcategorysystem.com/

I use terms like creepy, eerie, or strange for sounds that sound that way. And some of my audio files do sound like they could be sfx for use in a horror movie or video game of same genre.

Generally, I think sounds are often described by their similarity to other, more familiar sounds: "Whiney", "airy" (wind); or how they seem to have been produced: "Mechanical", "Gutteral"; etc.