Use a 1/8th in stereo male to 2 stereo RCA cord in your headphone jack. The RCA's go to your stereo's auxiliary inputs and your headphones get plugged into your stereo.

Sorry if this is a cheesy solution but it was freeware for me.

EDIT: picture of the ends of the cable

Edited by - conquistador on 5/27/2007 8:44:25 AM

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You might be better off buying an inexpensive sound card. I got the Creative Soundblaster Live for around $20. It's not the greatest but it beats a lot of motherboard sound easily. If you can open your computer case and put a hard drive in, you can do this. Takes about ten minutes. That's obviously not free. But it's the next best thing. If you have a little more to spend, better sound cards can be had but check around and see what others say about their headphone capabilities. Many sound cards still need an external amplifier for headphones that are even slightly hard to drive.

What kind of headphones are you using?

Edited by - randomprecision on 5/27/2007 8:33:38 AM

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Media Player Classic has a a gain (they call it "boost" I think) function in the sound menu. I don't think it does nice things to the overall sound quality. I only use it to figure out what people said in movies when an actor mumbles.

How you go about upping the volume might differ depending on what you're listening to on your headphones. If it's something like a podcast or an audio book, relatively level recorded speech the "boost" function on MPC would work well.

But if you are watching movies or listening to music I would think you should try a different approach.

If you're handy with solder and can read a schematic you'll be able to take advantage of one of the many headphone pre-amp diagrams you can find on the net. (I sort of consider this a free-ware solution though it's likely to cost you a few bucks at a surplus shop for parts)

RP is right about the differences between on board sound and switching up to a cheapo sound card. You can probably find something for 20$.

I'm also using an ASUS mother board (not the same model as you) and I agree that it's sort of quiet if not amplified more.

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I personally use a small mixing board connected to my computer. The headphone amp in it is very powerful. If I need extra gain for something soft, it's very easy to make it loud enough. You can easily make it much too loud for comfort.

I suspect you want something free or very close to it, so I won't bother with specifics of my board or other outboard specific headphone amplifiers.

Dr. P

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I suspect a good audio card will sound better at high levels and power heavier headphones more easily.

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