ESC-50 (Environmental Sound Classification)
ESC-50 (Environmental Sound Classification) is an audio data set for training models that can recognize environmental sounds. It brings together sound clips divided into five main categories, representing natural or everyday sounds, useful for automatic acoustic recognition.
2000 audio clips of 5 seconds each, WAV format
Free under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License (CC BY-NC)
Description
The ESC-50 dataset includes:
- 2,000 high-quality audio files (44.1 kHz, mono)
- Standardized duration of 5 seconds per clip
- 50 classes divided into 5 main categories:
- Animals (birds, dogs, insects...)
- Natural sounds (rain, wind, fire...)
- Human noises (laughing, coughing, sneezing...)
- Household appliances (clocks, doors, vacuum cleaners...)
- Urban environments (sirens, traffic, construction...)
Precise annotations make it easy to use directly for supervised tasks.
What is this dataset for?
ESC-50 is mainly used for:
- Training supervised audio classification models
- The validation of machine learning techniques on real sounds
- The development of embedded audio recognition systems
- Acoustic or psycho-acoustic analysis of natural or urban sounds
- Audio artificial intelligence research and the evaluation of new algorithms
Can it be enriched or improved?
Yes, several options are possible:
- The addition of sounds with realistic background noise to increase robustness
- Mixing or superimposing sounds to study source separation
- Extending with additional categories or records
- Integration with other corpora (AudioSet, UrbanSound8K) to broaden class diversity
🔗 Source: ESC-50 Dataset
Frequently Asked Questions
Can ESC-50 be used for commercial applications?
Not directly. ESC-50 is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC license (non-commercial). For commercial use, contact the authors.
Are the sounds in the dataset real or synthetic?
All sounds are real, recorded in natural or domestic conditions, guaranteeing sonic authenticity.
Are there extended versions of the ESC-50 dataset?
Yes, there are other similar datasets such as AudioSet, UrbanSound8K, or ESC-10 (reduced version).
