USE laptop as amp?

[therock003]

Is there a way to use a computer as an audio amplifier, so that you could stream audio from external devices and receive it in the computer via line in or spdif input and then amplify the signal and make correction and increase the volume intensity on the fly and output it on the appropriate speakers/sound system?

[Bjs]

As a form of pass through for the purpose of pre filtering, increase audio intensity yes, but it would need to be able to keep up with the output ... so it would need to be a unit with reasonable processing power.

[SingSing]

Nearly all of the signal processing applications for PC are post processing.

I have not able to google one that does audio on real-time.

[Des]

This might be a solution-
Line 6 makes a series of recording device for computers. It's their Toneport line. I have the Toneport GX, which is now discontinued, and it allows you to play guitar through your computer and process the signal in real time using their software and modeling styles. It's quite effective. The Toneport UX is still available as are others; these have multiple inputs.
The Toneport boxes are basically external USB2 soundcards with 1/4" and XLR input jacks and an 1/8" headphone/monitor jack on the back. I think you can also output the sound to the computer speakers, but I haven;t figured out how to do this with my setup.

--dES