Well it kinda seems you need a real-time processer to make this work. Haven't tried Protools but Audacity isn't the deal. Amplitube is kinda working, though. Haven't been able to tune it well yet. It needs a lot of processing power and physical memory - you'd do well with at least 2g ram and a turion 64 x2 for example.
Still, im convinced a hardware pre-amp is the only real solution to the problem. Amptitude has a slight 100 msec delay and it is very annoying. And it's the best i've been able to find after days of googling.