Psychoacoustic evaluation of tonal components in view of sound quality design for high-speed train interior noise

1. Introduction In high-speed trains, tonal components produced either by the motor or by corrugated rails may occur. As it is well-known from literature ([1], [2], [3]) that environmental or artificial noise containing tonal components is more annoying than noise without tonal components, the present investigation assesses the importance of reducing such tonal components. Therefore, typical sounds were synthesized and analyzed in psychoacoustic experiments with the following intentions: how much has a tonal component to stick out to be perceived at all? How are increases or decreases in sound energy in a limited frequency band related to the psychoacoustic sensation tonalness? What influence does this tonalness have on the perceived sound quality?