A system for increasing a loudness of an audio signal produced by a loudspeaker to present a perceived loudness to a listener that is greater than a loudness produced natively by the loudspeaker, the system comprising: a frequency suppressor (110; 210) comprising one or more filters (212, 214) configured to increase headroom in an electronic audio signal by filtering low and high frequencies of the electronic audio signal to produce a first filtered audio signal, the low and high frequencies being substantially unreproducible by the speaker; a loudness adjuster (120; 520) comprising: a loudness analyzer configured to calculate with one or more processors a loudness of the first filtered audio signal at least in part by processing the first filtered audio signal with one or more loudness filters configured to approximate a human hearing system, the loudness analyzer further configured to compare the calculated loudness with a loudness reference level, and a gain control module operative to compute one or more gains to be applied to the first filtered audio signal and to apply the one or more gains to the first filtered audio signal to produce an amplified audio signal, said computing the one or more gains being based at least partly on a difference between the calculated loudness and the loudness reference level; a distortion control module (140; 1040) configured to induce partial harmonic distortion in the amplified audio signal by at least mapping one or more samples of the first filtered audio signal to one or more values stored in a sum-of-sines table, the sum-of-sines table being generated from a sum of lower-order harmonics. a frequency suppressor (110; 210) comprising one or more filters (212, 214) configured to increase headroom in an electronic audio signal by filtering low and high frequencies of the electronic audio signal to produce a first filtered audio signal, the low and high frequencies being substantially unreproducible by the speaker; a loudness adjuster (120; 520) comprising: a loudness analyzer configured to calculate with one or more processors a loudness of the first filtered audio signal at least in part by processing the first filtered audio signal with one or more loudness filters configured to approximate a human hearing system, the loudness analyzer further configured to compare the calculated loudness with a loudness reference level, and a gain control module operative to compute one or more gains to be applied to the first filtered audio signal and to apply the one or more gains to the first filtered audio signal to produce an amplified audio signal, said computing the one or more gains being based at least partly on a difference between the calculated loudness and the loudness reference level; a loudness analyzer configured to calculate with one or more processors a loudness of the first filtered audio signal at least in part by processing the first filtered audio signal with one or more loudness filters configured to approximate a human hearing system, the loudness analyzer further configured to compare the calculated loudness with a loudness reference level, and a gain control module operative to compute one or more gains to be applied to the first filtered audio signal and to apply the one or more gains to the first filtered audio signal to produce an amplified audio signal, said computing the one or more gains being based at least partly on a difference between the calculated loudness and the loudness reference level; a distortion control module (140; 1040) configured to induce partial harmonic distortion in the amplified audio signal by at least mapping one or more samples of the first filtered audio signal to one or more values stored in a sum-of-sines table, the sum-of-sines table being generated from a sum of lower-order harmonics.