The Perceived Emotion of Isolated Synthetic Audio: The EmoSynth Dataset and Results

The ability of sound to enhance human wellbeing has been known since ancient civilisations, and methods can be found today across domains of health and within a variety of cultures. There are an abundance of sound-based methods which show benefits for both physical and mental-states of wellbeing. Current methods vary from low frequency vibrations to high frequency distractions, and from drone-like sustain to rhythmical pulsing, with limited knowledge of a listeners psycho-physical perception of this. In this regard, for the presented study 40 listeners were asked to evaluate the perceived emotional dimensions of Valence and Arousal from a dataset of 144 isolated synthetic periodic waveforms. Results show that Arousal does correlate moderately to fundamental frequency, and that the sine waveform is perceived as significantly different to square and sawtooth waveforms when evaluating perceived Arousal. The general results suggest that isolated synthetic audio can be modelled as a means of evoking affective states of emotion.