Hi,
I have a Dell desktop Optiplex 7010. Its built in sound is pretty feeble and has little adjustment, on screen anyway.

I have limited desktop space and don't want to clutter it up with trailing cables and speakers, unless I have to. So is there an alternative?

Is there, for instance, a usb plug-in amplifier, or something similar? Or could a sound card be fitted into the body of the Dell?

I just don't know and would appreciate some advice.

Cheers

If your distro uses Pulse audio (I'm guessing from your user agent icon that it's Ubuntu or a derivative thereof, which do use Pulse), the first thing I'd recommend is installing pavucontrol, the Pulse Audio mixer. It gives you much more granular control of audio settings than simple volume control programs and you may well find a setting that will resolve the problem.

Pavucontrol is in the Ubuntu repositories.

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You are right. I'm using Ubuntu. I found Pavucontrol and installed it. There is now a big difference - I don't have any sound at all! I'm not joking Could you please tell me how to uninstall Pavucontrol so I can start again, somehow?

Thanks for doing your best for me, by the way.

Frankbell,
I've managed to remove Pavucontrol now. Easier than I thought it would be.
Thanks.

There's no internal hardware solution.
Pulseaudio allows you to raise volume above 100%, so you might want to look into that again.
On Alsa, you should check that all playback sliders are at 100% => 'alsamixer' in terminal.
Many media players allow to raise volume beyond 100%, regardless of underlying sound architecture.

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Hi,
Sorry I haven't been able to respond more quickly. It's amazing how other things get in the way,

Anyway, I've had no luck with changes to the sliders and things, probably because i don't understand what I'm doing. So, I've borrowed a Logitech twin externalspeaker set from a friend to see what this would do. And it works very well. Very much more sound.

The trouble is that the stuff takes up more room that I want to use. 2 speakers, a large central sort of audio box, and five cables running all over. I'm taking it back tomorrow with thanks.

But if I could find an external kit of some moderate size, I'm sure I'd be satisfied with it. Even a single speaker would probably do. All I want to do is play music and a film occasionally from Utube. I should be able to get something for around £50 (English pounds)....

Any ideas, please?

Where are your external speakers? In the monitor?

You should be able to pick up a pair of small external speakers for ten bucks (US) or less.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-S120...6-f96e7b0f409c

I gave you some in post #5.

As far as I can tell from looking at the specs for the OP's computer, it doesn't have external speakers, unless, there was an option to buy a monitor with speakers. That tiny internal speaker was never meant to reproduce anything but system beeps, etc.

The 7010 provides a DisplayPort. DisplayPort per specification carries audio. A DisplayPort can be connected to a display that has a DisplayPort input or HDMI input (using DisplayPort to HDMI adapter or cable), and has speakers, to provide sound external to the PC without any extra wires.

HDMI can also carry sound to a monitor with built-in speakers.

Install pulseeffects which gives you a lot of dsp options including maximiser and other tools for manipulating sound

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Very likely the problem you are having with Pavucontrol is you have to select which sound device is default from the drop-down config menu and you probably have at least 2. There is one on the motherboard (with I/O on back panel) and most likely another accompanying your GPU whether on a card or in your CPU, or possibly both for a total of 3. FWIW depending on how important audio is to you, add-on external amplified speakers are quite cheap even for fairly decent ones. If your monitor has amplified speakers all you need is a relatively cheap cable and you're good to go for basics... You will still need to specify the default sound chip source though