Cheap headphone amp recommendation?

[Heher]

Here's my problem. I have a dedicated always-on VAIO laptop in a drawer that runs Garritan CFX Lite, receiving MIDI input from my ES7. I listen through Sennheiser HD-595 headphones https://waveadvice.com/cheap-headphone-amps/ connected directly to the laptop's headphone-out (I use the embedded audio with ASIO4ALL). The audio quality is excellent, the latency is very low, however it's not loud enough. I've used the CFX's gain slider and while it works great, it also naturally clips on very loud passages

I tried three USB audio interfaces I own:

M-Audio Transit USB: still quiet, not supported in Windows 10 => hangs often, can't run in low latency without clicks

Alesis Control Hub: slightly louder, however it has a subpar audio quality (hiss), better latency that the M-Audio but still slow

Apogee Groove: this is a dac/amp that I use with my HD-650 for listening to music, not exactly an audio interface, Nevertheless, I've experimented with it to see whether it will help because it can drive high-impedance headphones. On max amplification level the sound volume is just right, however the lowest supported latency without clicks is still slow

I've specifically configured it to work in "very low latency" USB mode in its ASIO control panel, buffer is of size 128, but it's still perceptibly slower than the motherboard audio with ASIO4ALL at the same 128 buffer size.
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In conclusion: all three external USB interfaces suffer with latency issues which I attribute to the slow USB bus compared to the embedded audio that probably works on a much faster internal (PCI?) bus.

So, my only solution seems to be to somehow amplify my embedded audio. After recently spending some cache on other projects I am on a tight budget and am after a simple and cheap audio amplifier that can boost a headphone out a little without degrading quality too much.

What would you suggest?

 

[Veri]

Double-amp the laptop output to a JDS Atom set the laptop to a non-clipping volume and use the atom low/high gain and volume knob to set your final volume.

 

[Darwin]

JDS Labs Atom is the easy answer.

 

[Darwin]

In conclusion: all three external USB interfaces suffer with latency issues which I attribute to the slow USB bus compared to the embedded audio that probably works on a much faster internal (PCI?) bus.

I doubt that very much. USB should be more than fast enough.

 

[JJB70]

The JDS Atom is one of those products that really does beg the question of why spend more? Unless you want premium materials and build then the Atom is all the headphone amplifier you need, a remarkable little piece of kit.

 

[garbulky]

Are you trying to record? Why do you need low latency

 

[JohnYang1997]

Double-amp the laptop output to a JDS Atom set the laptop to a non-clipping volume and use the atom low/high gain and volume knob to set your final volume.

noiiiiise

 

[Veri]

noiiiiise

Depends. He can try it first. Note the "CHEAP" in the title, haha.