After a rather lengthy examination, I'm climbing aboard the group buy.
Compared it against Equim, Hydratone, and the Waves SSL pack, and to my ears, I think the only one that came close to handling the transients as well as the Air was the Waves, and then it became more a matter of dealers choice, not that either particularly fell short.
Not sure I'm going to find much use for the "air" control for the top end, but I'm pretty darn happy with the way it seems to bring out the meat of the low end, and I've found a few tracks, at least, where it absolutely rocked at revealing qualities of guitar mids that nothing else quite seemed to do.
No doubt, excellent hardware will cordially blow it out of the water, but for an ITB tool, here in late 2006, it pretty much excels, to my ears at least.
Cheers all.
