An underwater acoustic dataset of anthropogenic noise in Lake Balaton, Hungary

This data article presents a curated dataset of underwater acoustic recordings collected in Lake Balaton, Hungary, Central Europe's largest shallow lake and one of the region's most intensively used freshwater ecosystems. The dataset comprises 18 WAV audio files (approximately 7.8 GB; approximately 3 h of recordings) documenting multiple sources of anthropogenic underwater noise in a shallow freshwater environment. Recorded sound sources include vessel traffic (ferries, catamarans, and water police boats), propulsion systems with different engine types (5 HP and 10 HP petrol outboard engines, a 48 V electric motor, and a small electric outboard motor), and music festival noise recorded at distances of 250 m, 500 m, and 1000 m from the source area. Ambient soundscape recordings from two locations and a hydrophone calibration recording are also included. All recordings were acquired using an Aquarian Scientific AS-1 hydrophone connected to a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 USB audio interface and are provided as 32-bit float WAV files at a sampling rate of 192 kHz. The dataset represents, to our knowledge, the first publicly available collection of underwater acoustic recordings from Lake Balaton and one of the few freshwater datasets focusing on anthropogenic noise sources. These recordings may support studies of freshwater soundscapes, comparative analyses of vessel and motor noise, assessment of the detectability of festival-generated underwater sound at different distances, development of acoustic monitoring methods, and training or validation of signal-processing approaches. The dataset also provides a freshwater counterpart to the predominantly marine underwater acoustic databases currently available.