Single neuron data recorded from auditory cortex and midbrain during a tone detection behavior were used to dissociate effects of generalized arousal (as measured by pupil) and specific task engagement on auditory neural coding. These data are provided open-access accompanying the publication: D. Saderi, Z.P. Schwartz, C.R. Heller, J.R. Pennington, S.V. David. (2020) Dissociation of task engagement and arousal effects in auditory cortex and midbrain. bioRxiv. 2020.06.16.155432. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.16.155432 The authors request that any work using this data cite this publication.