Ok i know these kind of topics are not popular to the “fix the bugs first/” crowd but along with the visual design of SFOS the sounds feel kind of dated after all these years.
Don’t know jollas priorities and kind of doubt its a top one (the visual also) but i feel like we need a change.
Discuss (if you feel like).
If they’ll ever decide to redo the sounds, old ones should still be there
I’ll be honest, i love default sounds and this is the only operating system i had where sounds were good. I ended up also using them in my brief period with android
This is just my opinion of course and maybe someone else will say they sound dated 
How the sounds are perceived can be quite subjective. Do you have some specific cases in mind that feel ‘old’? More of the UI feedbacks (e.g. pulley menu) or different alarm tones? For latter there are multiple options to choose from.
…and you can make your own.
Sound design?, I’d rather the browser got some more love.
You can also load additional sound themes, there are quiet a few available on openrepos, here some examples:
https://openrepos.net/content/nephros/lomiri-sound-theme-ringtones
https://openrepos.net/content/nephros/freedesktop-sound-theme
https://openrepos.net/content/nephros/enchanted-sound-theme
As you said it is subjective. But i cant help feel that it feels dated. Maybe it is from all the years i’ve been using it.
A refresh once in a while never hurts i think.
For hackers:
The ringtones are in
/usr/share/sounds/jolla-ringtones/stereo/
in .ogg format.
One can store own ringtones in this directory.
The index of the ringtones is:
/usr/share/sounds/jolla-ringtones/stereo.index
In this index file there’s an entry for each tone, this way:
, {
"displayName" : "jolla-ringtones-the-first-one-alert-2",
"fileName" : "the-first-one-alert-2.ogg"
}
This can be added for new ringtones, or existing entries of unwanted tones can be edited to the new filenames and displaynames. Deleting old or unwanted sound files not necessary, they are small size.
TLDR:
I made a lot of tones out of cat and pet videos using Audacity, so I now have a cock for alarm clock, a cat meow for ringtone and hen cackle for SMS and messenger alarm.
That’s how it works, but um, you can also just use the file picker in the sound settings and get your own tones from the UI? 
Yes, that is possible without problem. But path to user soundfile is a stored setting and SFOS is famous for sometimes mess up or forget user settings. Therefore i prefer hard coding.
That’s a fame I’m not aware of. Sure with the ambience overrides it’s easy to mess up sound settings settings but we haven’t done those by default in long time.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7nvZxgxpPKc
We are getting new ringtones. (hopefully other sound in the OS will be looked after also)
Who is that guy, is he the Hans Zimmer from Finland? 
For anybody searching for the new ringtones from the ringtone project:
After you installed the ringtone project app from the jolla store the ringtones are under:
/usr/share/ambience/name of backcover/sounds
So for example:
/usr/share/ambience/the-orange/sounds
The full length file is always the ringtone.ogg file. Files are also called sound.index and are in the parent folder (/usr/share/ambience/the-orange/sound.index)
Edit:
The old ringtones are still under
/usr/share/sounds/jolla-ringtones/stereo/name.ogg
as said in the first post.
Is editing that index file needed?
Usually I have no problem to store personal ringtones in my home folder, but that way they are also found by media players (worse when you shuffle songs). If I place a .nomedia or .nomusic file inide that folder media players ignore them, but can also not be selected as personal media files to set up sounds.
Afaik, yes. It maps file name to a custom ringtone name.
So alert.ogg can appear as “Alarm Tone” or so in the selector.
Btw you don’t need to store sounds in the ambience folder, you can also have sound sets in /usr/share/sounds (perhaps even ~/.local/share/sounds, haven’t tried). Will also need index files.
You can find example sound themes on OpenRepos, and here.