A nostalgic ‘Good old Times’ association could explain railway-noise preference

Evidence

An alternative hypothesis, based on cognitive effects would be that sounds from railways might elicit nostalgic feelings of “Good old Times” and therefore - at same LAeq - railway-noise would be preferred in comparison to road-traffic-noise. In order to estimate the magnitude of such cognitive effects both railway-noise and road-traffic-noise were processed by the procedure described in Sect. 16.1.5 in order to obscure the sound source. Results of corresponding experiments with sounds of five minutes duration are displayed in Fig. 16.13. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1816

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how is the sound source obscured (Sect 16.1.5)? Does the cognitive effect replicate in subsequent studies?