Sound Card/Speakers/Headphones...how stupid am I?

[boomer6447]

Okay...got a good deal on some new speakers for my PC at home....Got the Labtec 2422..with sub-woofer.
Had a set of Koss SX-50, with the headphone jack in the speaker. These new speakers don't have that headphone jack , so I've been trying to figure out a way to use headphones, since my PC is in the living room and my kids constantly play on the PC when wife and I are trying to watch TV.
I bought a 8mm Y splitter to run from the back of the soundcard. Plugged one into the speakers and one into the headphones...
got normal sound from speakers...got ALMOST NO volume from the headphones.
Figured out that I probably need some sort of amplification between the soundcard and the headphones...??? (this is when the how stupid am I comes into play). The headphones I bought were nice Sony ones, with a volume control on the wire...I stupidly assumed
that the volume control would help, but nada, nothing, zilch, almost no sound from the headphones...

Any ideas? I've looked on the net today for amplified headphones, didn't really see too much. Any other ways to get around this problem, short of buying speakers with a headphone jack?

 

[Ornery]

This makes no sense. Plug the phones directly into the sound card and see how they sound. If they're still not loud enough, then something's wrong. Boost the sound from the sound card using your software sound controller in Windows.

 

[MajesticMoose]

do your speakers have a separate volume control? If so, turn that down and turn up the sound in the windows control. That should hopefully be all you need.

m00se

 

[boomer6447]

That's what I thought, so I took out the splitter and still got almost no sound...Only thing I could think of is the speakers have a volume adjustment on them, but that shouldn't affect the sound coming directly out of the sound card should it????

 

[boomer6447]

so...basically, headphones plugged directly into a sound card should sound have a normal range for volume???
No amplification needed?

See I really am stupid about this...

 

[911paramedic]

I have the Klipsch speakers that are too loud to turn up past 1/4 turn without shaking my windows, your hair gets blown back from the air out of the subwoofer. The nice thing is they have a headphone jack on the right desktop speaker with volume controls as well. It is a good system, too bad you already purchased some... (they were expensive too, but you get what you pay for most of the time, IMO)

 

[MajesticMoose]

You are probably using the speakers to amplify the sound instead of the sound card. You just need to use the sound card to do it instead by turning up the volume in windows.

m00se

 

[amdskip]

are you sure there is no headphone jack because if you are talking about the speaker I think you are there is one on the side of the right speaker

 

[Ornery]

I have no doubt now, that all you have to do is turn up the volume of Windows Sound Control Panel. Do you have a volume control in your taskbar tray? Use that. If not, enable it using Start, Settings, Control Panel, Multimedia, Audio Tab, Check the box for "Show volume control on the taskbar." If that box is ghosted, you should still have a software volume control installed by the soundcard drivers disk.

 

[davestar]

I'm not totally sure what the norm is in sound cards, but I expect some of them have a line-level out (no amplification) and speaker-level out (amplified). Since your speakers have a subwoofer, I'm sure that they are self-powered - a sound card would not be able to power a sub and two speakers well. Check to make sure you don't have a "speaker-level" out on your card, and if you do have one, use that for your headphones. If you ARE using the speaker-level out now, check the windows volume settings to make sure that the main volume isn't turned most of the way down.

 

[boomer6447]

Davestar...I think you hit the nail on the head. All the settings inside XP are correct, volume control is MAXED full, so I think it's the amplified line thingy......It is a soundcard that is built into the motherboard (here is the MB manufacturer Website for ECS Motherboards and the motherboard is the K7S5A. Sound chip is built in and has the following Audio Ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port).
So, I'm plugging the headphones into the line-out and the volume is WAYYYYY low. Maybe I need a new soundcard?

 

[clarkmo]

Well, it looks like you ran into my obstacle. The speaker port on the sound card does not provide enough power to your headphones. Your headphones need so many ohms and that's where the headphone amp comes in. Try headwise.com for more info. You'll probably have to build your own (they have plans) unless you wanna pay thru the nose.