There was a time when it was available only in TDM/RTAS or MAS. It's over now, you can have it in VST too. Sacrified to the simple mortals in some way…. Channelstrip will make your day for less than 300$.
Compressor, EQ, Noise Gate, Phase Inverter… a "real" channel strip - hmm something under that ;) - now poors can afford it ...

Need Logic 5 and its magic dongle to mix projects with way too many faders? No more!
Mackie and its Mackie Control will make users of programs like Nuendo, cubase SX or DP happier. A modified version of the HUI without the monitoring section, the 2 pres among a few things. It can be extended by blocks of 8 faders.

Edirol Corporation announced that their new UM-550 5x5 USB MIDI Interface is now shipping.
The newest in a long line of Edirol MIDI interfaces, this 3/4 rack unit provides a 5 input – 5 output MIDI switching interface. The UM-550 is the little brother of the UM-880 and contains many of the same features – ideally suited for the MIDI studio with fewer devices. The suggested list price is $240.

BIAS, Inc. announced that its multi-effects control environment, Vbox 1.1, with support both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems, as well as Mac OS 9, is now shipping. BIAS Vbox 1.1 for Windows marks the company's first product release for the Windows platform; Vbox 1.1 for Mac OS X is among the first audio products for Apple's newest operating system. Following the release of BIAS Peak 3 and BIAS Deck 3.5 for OS X, the release of Vbox 1.1 brings the entire BIAS product line to Mac OS X.

Akai comes to software and now ships 5 VST plug-ins for mac: -DC VOCODER- a high quality 50-band vocoder, -ROTATOR- a rotating speaker, -QUADCOMP- a multi-band compressor/expander, -PITCHRIGHT- a real-time pitch corrector with "virtually" zero latency, -DECABUDDY- a multi-channel harmony generator.