The Elysia Skulpter 500 series pre amp, takes the concept of the pre amp stage of a recording and almost turns it on its head... It could almost be thought of as more of a channel strip with this amount of features.
It has a very hi-fi way of applying gain in the first stage, then adds a THD control, simple filtering and then a one knob compression setting. The input can take a very high dBu so it is suitable for almost any input...
More info at Elysia
Older Music Machines & the People Who Still Use Them
Developments for Korg's instrument have been slow but promising.