Low volume: Earphones or laptop?

[bignickel]

On my new laptop, I've plugged the earphones that came with my Sandisk mp3 player. But dang: it's hardly loud enough to hear when I'm playing .mp3s on my laptop at the coffeehaus.

Is this to be expected with laptops, or is it that the earphones that come with .mp3 players just can't produce any volume?

That said: MUSIC on my laptop can drown out most anything, but I'm trying to listen to Japanese speech lessons. ie no music, just talk.

[Jyera]

Laptop should have enough power.
I would say your surrounding is too noisy.

I have a Audiophile CD featuring very nice vocals.
The sentimental songs has very little loud music, lots of silence, so that I may enjoy the "pure" beautiful voice of the singer. It is impossible to enjoy when I'm travelling on the public transport.

[Vitnir]

Unless its a mixup with the different volume settings, the wave volume is set low and the CD volume to high, then I dont know. Maybe try boosting the frequencies for speech in an equalizer.

[CFLarsen]

Is this to be expected with laptops, or is it that the earphones that come with .mp3 players just can't produce any volume?

The latter. The earphones that come with MP3 players generally suck.

[Soapy Sam]

Bignickel- Do your earphones have a volume control built into the cable?
If so, could it perhaps be turned down?

[bignickel]

You want me to turn the volume down? Why, are they bothering you? :P

No, no volume control. When I'm out and about, I'll look for some better earphones.

But I suspect it just may be that speech thru earphones can't compete with outside music and noise.

[SphereGuy]

On my new laptop, I've plugged the earphones that came with my Sandisk mp3 player. But dang: it's hardly loud enough to hear when I'm playing .mp3s on my laptop at the coffeehaus.

Is this to be expected with laptops, or is it that the earphones that come with .mp3 players just can't produce any volume?

That said: MUSIC on my laptop can drown out most anything, but I'm trying to listen to Japanese speech lessons. ie no music, just talk.

I know I downloaded three versions of the same song and one just would not turn up loud, it could be in the .mp3 recording itself. When you say music is loud, do you mean mp3 music or CD music? If both are loud and your voice lessons are low it could just be the way the voice lesson is encoded. Try the low recording on another PC. Do you have the same problem?

[El Greco]

If both are loud and your voice lessons are low it could just be the way the voice lesson is encoded.

If so, get MP3gain (http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/).

[bignickel]

Well, actually, the files are WMA's, not mp3s (the sandisk holds 240 WMAs as opposed to 120 mp3s). But that might be neither here nor there.

I suspect I just may have to listen to them at a more quiet location.

[Smike]

If you do want to try amplifying them, try audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), a free audio editor. I recommend it.

[Mongrel]

Or you could get a headphone amp. If you're up for a bit of fun with a soldering iron there's some instructions on how to make one here (http://www.headwize.com/projects/showproj.php?file=cmoy2_prj.htm)
There are commercial versions available as well, such as this one (http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=113651) at the cheaper end of the market going up to the products described in this article (http://dansdata.com/tbitety.htm)

[Stainless_Steel_Rat]

I'm assuming you've already looked in the advanced volume control to make sure everything was cranked up. (Some programs directly change the wave volume instead of adjusting it through the program itself. Other than that, I'd just guess you're plugging into the wrong jack :P Sometimes the line out jack will output faintly to speakers, making you think you plugged into the speaker jack.

Otherwise, you bought crappy headphones. :P

SSR

[Diamond]

You could be going deaf.

[bignickel]

What was that?