The railway bonus persists even when sound sources are obscured, ruling out cognitive effects

Evidence

The data plotted in Fig. 16.13 indicate a railway bonus: At same LAeq = 55 dB(A), for road-traffic-noise the overall loudness is judged to be “slightly loud” whereas for railway-noise, the overall loudness is “neither loud nor soft”. Since this difference holds also for the processed sounds, where the information about the sound sources is obscured, cognitive effects seem to playa minor role in this case. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1817

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the common assumption that noise annoyance is mostly top-down/psychological; parallels findings on A-weighting limits in hearing science.