If the stimuli can have speech vs nonverbal or just emotional sounds, there are lots of databases available:
Toronto Emotional Speech Set (Dupuis & Pichora Fuller)
Morgan Emotional Speech Set (Morgan, 2019)
Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS; Livingstone and Russo 2018)
They're all different in terms of which variables they code/don't code for. RAVDESS has song and speech, limited sentence variability (2 sentence frames), but many talkers and emotional expressions in high and low intensity. MESS has more semantic variability
and target words (making it suitable for word and emotion recognition studies, masking, intelligibility, etc.), but fewer talkers (3 female 3 male) recorded at a single intensity for 4 emotion groups. TESS has few talkers, but includes age as a factor, a good
number of emotional expressions.
Table 1 in Morgan & LaPaugh (2025) has a summary of commonly used emotional speech databases with citations for each - you can read up on the methods to see which database would suit your needs!
Morgan, S. D., & LaPaugh, B. (2025). Methodological Stimulus Considerations for Auditory Emotion Recognition Test Design. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 68(3), 1209-1224.
Cheers!
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Shae Morgan, PhD, AuD, CCC-A (he/him/his) Associate Professor Program Director, Audiology |
From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Sophie Scott <sophie.scott@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:34 AM
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Subject: Re: [AUDITORY] Emotions vocalisations database
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:34 AM
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [AUDITORY] Emotions vocalisations database
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The stimulus set of non verbal emotional vocalizations that are reported in this paper, Sauter et al, 2010, QJEP (https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_1169646/component/file_1169645/content),
and some of which are cross culturally recognised (Sauter et al, PNAS 2010) are available if you email me directly.
Best wishes
Sophie
Prof Sophie Scott CBE
Director, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL,
17 Queen Square,
London WC1N 3AZ
020 7679 1144 (office)
07881853586 (mobile)
From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Uther, Maria <M.Uther@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 23 February 2026 11:03
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Emotions vocalisations database
Sent: 23 February 2026 11:03
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Emotions vocalisations database
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Hello all,
I am in need of a set of freely available emotions vocalisations for a study I am doing on detecting emotions in the human voice.
I am aware of the Montreal Affective Voices. I am also aware of the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-E) database.
Is there any reason to choose one over the other or anybody have any other suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Maria
Professor Maria Uther, C.Psychol., CSci., AFBPsS
Honorary Professor
University of Wolverhampton