Freesound Forums

I would like to see the sounds categorised, so loops, recorded sound effects and synthesised effects are separated so you can search for just one kind of sound. Of course, please suggest different categories depending on what would be useful to you.

I can see a problem with this however - all the existing sounds would have to be categorised somehow... maybe it can be guessed judging by the tags and then changed by the user if it's wrong? Or there could be a feature where any user can identify each sound as part of a category? Any ideas?

Adam

Maybe I'm missing your point here, but isn't tagging already a categorisation you're after?

Or if I reflect deeper, you want an extra layer of categorisation when performing searches, so you can narrow down the particular type of sound you want within a set of tags? Like search refining which we already have to a degree.

For example:

Kick > Synthesised
Kick > Recorded
Kick > Loop

Well your particular suggestion, mechanically, could be achieved already to a certain degree without user intervention, but it would need a good deal of work to generate an algorithm that would carry this out properly. This is because users often tag sounds with multiple layers which describe the complete nature of that sound. (a good deal of users do poorly tag and describe their sounds though I have to admit, but for the most part it's decent enough).

There is already in fact something very basic along the same lines of this request. When searching, a few lists sections of criteria will appear on the right hand side e.g. license type, format etc. If you click on another tag in that section, it will add that to the query so that only sounds with those tags specified will appear in the results. Now, obviously this is basic because we don't have the ability to add a custom search term or tag to our filter, only what is provided for us. So another waaay easier method of achieving this functionality would be to simply allow users to add custom filters using the search bar. For instance, there could be a button which says "add to filter" and such, then we don't run into the problem of having too little categories.

Well, I think you have a good suggestion there if I've understood correctly; I'm backing it.

Hi,

this is something we definitely take into consideration.
We do research related with all these aspects you're pointing out, and in a mid-term future you might see some changes in the description form to accommodate this kind of metadata. Meanwhile, and as Headphaze says, using proper tagging you can achieve a similar result.

frederic

Oh no! more fields to copy and paste XD

Just kidding, although that is another point raised quite a lot.

I think a short term solution could be to implement what I previously described: allowing a user to use the current or an additional search bar to add their custom specified tags or terms to the active filters, because right now you can only add specific tags from the limited selection provided on the right. To me that seems like an easy thing to do as interim, whilst you "consider".