Headphone amplification methods?

I need a way to increase\improve the sound from my headphones for speech transcription.

It seems to me that I have several options:

1) Headphone amp. Lots on Ali but quality and durability are unknown.

2) Separate sound card? At present I'm using the motherboard chip.

3) Old amplifier? I have one of these that I've used before - connected to the PC sound out, then the cans plug into its headphone socket. Cons are, it's bulky and the volume control is a bit flaky.


Comments appreciated.

There shouldn't be a problem with in board if your using head phones if they are correct impedance

I agrees with Samuria. Speech transcription created in a virtual environment should be be more straight forward to amplify, the onboard sound card should be sufficient.

If the speech, and the audio in general, is not altogether clear to you, then you want an amplifier/speakers with better signal-to-noise ratio.

Samuria: "There shouldn't be a problem with in board if your using head phones if they are correct impedance"

iko22: "I agrees with Samuria. Speech transcription created in a virtual environment should be be more straight forward to amplify, the onboard sound card should be sufficient."

Guys, thank you for those insightful comments. The fact remains that there IS a problem. Which is why I asked for comments on the best options.

One's stage output is the input to the next stage - can I ask, are you happy with the amount of RAM usage, CPU performance while doing speech transcription? In other words, I was not too sure as to why you'd cause to reason that the amplification was the prime issue.

If you click on the Speaker in the system tray and click on mixer, what is the sound level for either the software or device you're using?

control panel > sound > playback > click your sound device > properties > levels > slide the slider to the right

See if you have equalizer on your pc (click on speaker/enhanced/equalizer), that's the program where you adjust level of different frequencies and you can increase sound levels of 400Hz to 5kHz to max, instead of middle. If it doesn't show freq. numbers, at least should have bass/ treble, make sure those are set to full. If nothing works, then get hardware, but here are so many options, BT and wired and simplest would be to run wire from headphone output on PC to any amp, radio or TV sound input, just make sure you match the output to input somehow (for example don't set PC to max loudness and then hook it up to pre-amp.)

Many models of outboard amplifier can accept signal from USB ports nowadays.