This work is part of a French-German PREDIT/DEUFRAKO project conducted between 2006 and 2009, entitled “Transport noise, influences of the temporal structure on annoyance, cognitive performances and sleep.” The present study focuses on the sound quality of six high-speed train pass-bys recorded at several distances from the track. A traditional psychophysical approach was used to carry out perceptual experiments, which involved twenty participants in listening tests, based on a paired comparison method. For each pair, dissimilarity was assessed on an eleven-point scale, combined to a preference judgment and a written explanation. Data were analyzed using an INDividual multidimensional SCALing (INDSCAL) for perceptual characterization, a statistical analysis for preferences and a linguistic analysis for explanations. Fluctuation strength and roughness appeared to be related to the first discriminating axis, whereas the second one appeared to be linked to the pass-by duration, the spectrum and the perceived level. Besides, when analyzing the preference scale, the spectrum and duration properties did not appear to be relevant. This is presumably due to changes in strategy (intra and inter subjects), concerning the temporal envelope and the spectrum, leading to a cancellation of their influence on the preference scale.