Some of the audio that I am transcribing is quiet and I would like to raise the volume higher than 100% similar to how VLC media player can raise the volume up to 200%. That would help a lot with certain sections where the speaker is talking close to a whisper.
Hello,
ELAN currently uses different media frameworks for playback depending on the operating system and selected media backend, and in the default backends the playback volume is controlled by the underlying(native ) media framework whose volume controls are designed for the normal 0–100% range. Because of that, supporting a VLC-like “volume above 100%” feature is not a very small change for ELAN, it would require deeper changes in the playback layer and careful testing to avoid breaking existing behaviour, especially if it has to work reliably across Windows, macOS, and Linux without affecting normal playback behaviour.
Your request is valid, though, and boosting very quiet speech would indeed be useful for transcription. For now, the most reliable workaround is to increase the level of the recording in an external tool such as Audacity, for example with Amplify, Normalize, or Compressor, and then use the adjusted copy in ELAN. That gives better control over whisper-level passages and usually better audio quality than extreme playback boosting alone.