<p>The surrounding rock of deep engineering is under high stress and often affected by dynamic disturbance loads such as excavation blasting, fault sliding, and earthquake. These loads may cause rock instability and even rockburst disaster. To study the dynamic responses of deep marble under high stress, true triaxial compression (TTC), true triaxial disturbed compression (TTDC) along with synchronous acoustic emission (AE) tests were conducted on the marble specimens. It is found that the lateral impulsive disturbance weakens the strengths of the specimens, but improves their integrity to some extent. The surfaces of the TTC specimens exhibit stronger splitting failure characteristics than those of the TTDC specimens. Under TTDC, the specimen deformation in the direction of intermediate principal stress (<i>σ</i>₂) shows a trend of ‘expansion–contraction-expansion’&#xa0;and&#xa0;the shear fracturing in the direction of minor principal stress (<i>σ</i>₃) become obvious&#xa0;with the increase of <i>σ</i>₂. After the lateral impulsive disturbance, the specimens have an “outbreak period” of AE events&#xa0;before and after their failure. More energy is released during the failure process, and severer damage occurs at higher <i>σ</i>₂. The lateral impulsive disturbance changes the micro-fracture activities and the crack distribution of the specimens. It is easier for&#xa0;shear cracks to occur and develop in the disturbed specimens. After the lateral impulsive disturbance, the specimens are more sensitive to <i>σ</i>₂. When <i>σ</i>₂ is high, the AE <i>b</i> values decrease significantly several times before and after the specimen failure.</p>