Loudness is not reducible to sound pressure level or signal power

Evidence

The take-home message, then, is that wide bandwidth stimuli are louder than narrow bandwidth stimuli when presented at the same dB SPL level. These results again highlight that loudness and sound pressure level are not the same. Further, when assessing the loudness of sounds, we must consider more than the power or dB SPL of the stimulus. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 767