Was going to get around to that Drumsound =]
I dunno...with all of Jules' ranting about not really needing to hit digital with compression I was considering just using the UAD-1 DSP card's 1176 powered plug-in.
http://www.uaudio.com/emulation/
Looks fairly powerful.
But yes, I'm also interested in pre-comp. I thought about getting a Manley VoxBox or something similar...but dear god that's starting to get grossly overbudget. Perhaps a used Voxbox? Doesn't seem like lots of people are actually aching to give one up though - and not for a cheap price for that matter.
I'm really at a loss about the API and other module style channel strips - I have no idea what to look for...or what is generally "good" sounding and why.