Studies show that vocal emotion recognition declines with age, but whether this is due to reduced sensitivity to acoustic cues (e.g., pitch-based cues) or cognitive changes is unclear. We assessed sensitivity to two important voice cues, fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), which may also be relevant for emotion perception in speech. Using an adaptive 3I-3AFC paradigm, we measured just-noticeable differences to evaluate sensitivity to F0 and VTL. In a second task, we assessed vocal emotion recognition for happy, angry, and sad utterances in non-language-specific pseudo-speech. Participants ranged in age from 24 to 70 years, allowing us to examine how both lower-level sensory processing and higher-level emotion processing are affected by age, and the predictive value of F0 and VTL sensitivity in emotion recognition tasks.