I would also recommend
BlackLion. Buy the digi 002 for 600 and I'm sure you can upgrade it with the rest of the money. I'm really eye'n their little converter the "sparrow". They have sound samples on their website too. The difference is huge if you have a good monitoring system. I've heard nothing but good things about their mods.
I had an apogee mini me. Worked pretty good but I didn't get good head room on the pre's. But for the price they're pretty solid. If you can get one for 500 do it. My mic didn't have a pad and neither did my mini me so when sources got too loud i had to back them up sometimes farther then i wanted but i had no choice.
For the a2d can anyone conclude that those converters are REally good. I've heard that they are okay and if that's the case then i wouldn't think it would be worth it except the for the api pre's but i would rather get a lunch box where i could add other pre's and run that into a 2 channel converter like the black lion sparrow for the nearly the same price