Douglas Adams, author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" said that in one scene from his original radio series of the same name, where they wanted to convey the sense of extreme volume in music without being so loud that you couldn't hear the dialogue, they played the music at high volumes in a different room behind a closed door (i.e. introduced distortion). They then amplified this resulting sound coming through the door/walls, and it sounded loud without being loud.