Middle East · Saudi Arabia

Arabic (Modern Standard) conversational speech dataset

2,000 hours of unscripted Arabic (Modern Standard) conversation between pairs of native speakers, 200 vetted speakers in all, recorded in Saudi Arabia. Every recording is dual-channel, one speaker per channel, and comes with a time-aligned, human-verified transcript, speaker metadata (age, gender, region and recording device) and signed consent records, under a commercial license for ASR, TTS and voice AI training.

Dataset specifications

LanguageArabic (Modern Standard)
Recorded inSaudi Arabia
Speech typeSpontaneous two-person conversations
Volume2,000 hours
Speakers200 vetted native speakers
AudioDual-channel (one channel per speaker)
TranscriptsTime-aligned, human-verified
MetadataAge, gender, region, recording device
LicenseCommercial (training & evaluation)
Price$90 per hour of audio

Need more hours, another dialect or your own recording setup? We collect speech data to spec.

Built for

For teams training or testing speech models that have to cope with real Arabic (Modern Standard) speech:

  • Automatic speech recognition (ASR / STT)
  • Text-to-speech and voice synthesis prosody
  • Voice agents and IVR for Saudi Arabia
  • Speaker diarization and turn-taking models
  • Speech LLM and audio-understanding fine-tuning

Why conversational data?

Models trained on read speech lose accuracy on spontaneous audio, because hesitations, overlapping turns and natural speaking rates never made it into their training data. This dataset fills that gap for Arabic (Modern Standard). Our guide to conversational speech data explains why it matters.

Free samples

Audit the Arabic (Modern Standard) data yourself

Leave your details and the Spirelight team will email representative audio, matching transcripts and the metadata schema within 48 hours. Check recording quality, transcript accuracy and the speaker mix before you commit to anything.

No account, no verification code, no obligation.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is in the Arabic (Modern Standard) speech dataset?

2,000 hours of unscripted conversation between pairs of native speakers, 200 vetted speakers in all, recorded in Saudi Arabia. Each conversation is delivered as dual-channel audio with a time-aligned transcript, speaker metadata (age, gender, region and recording device) and the consent records behind it.

What makes Modern Standard Arabic hard for speech recognition?

Modern Standard Arabic is used for news, speeches and writing, yet hardly anyone speaks it at home, and speakers bring their own dialect's accent to it. Written Arabic normally omits short vowels, so a single spelling has several possible readings, which affects transcripts and TTS alike.

Is the Arabic (Modern Standard) dataset licensed for commercial use?

Yes. The license covers commercial training and evaluation of ASR, TTS and other voice AI models. Every speaker signed explicit consent to commercial use, and Spirelight shares the full consent records for your legal review.

What does the Arabic (Modern Standard) speech dataset cost?

$90 per hour of audio. Buying the full dataset, or several languages together, qualifies for a volume discount: ask for a quote.

Can I check samples before I buy?

Yes. Request samples on this page and the Spirelight team emails representative audio, matching transcripts and the metadata schema within 48 hours, so your team can audit the data before committing.