Apogee Mini-Me

OVERVIEW

I do not really understand why Apogee Electronics is not making devices like these anymore. They have discontinued this product in 2003 and I am wondering why they would do such a thing. Is it because it was packed with features in a small portable device? Or is it that people have no need for a high end portable converter? Or is it that company has bigger interests than making feature-packed products?

It was not cheap, but you could find these hovering on ebay for about 700$

IN USE

I have been using mini me as a portable firewire interface and carried it around Europe and recorded classical recitals with it. Cool thing about it that it records in 96khz 24bit
Also, ultra clean sounding preamps have Soft limiter, and Soft Limiter Compression (SLC) switch with 3 curves (how neat)
Possible to change compressor release from inside the box by adjusting screw (wtf?) but still bizzare cool.
Mini-Me outperformed many interfaces in this range. Actually I couldn't find anything in this "Higher End" range

If your SPIDIF/AES of your sound card is gathering dust and doing nothing, you could put it to work and connect mini me and have extra two ultra clean nice sounding preamplifiers with Direct Boxes.

CONS

There is a significant amount of latency when tracking. This box is not great for session work. There is no analog output except 1/8" mini headphone jack.

OVERALL

Mini-Me slaughters Apogees Duet2 by far in features and its functionality. And now, it only costs about the same as his predecessor. It seems obvious that Apogee Electronics is now Pro-sumer oriented and they are targeting guitar heroes and "garage band" musicians in order to make more profit.
Shamefull.
Mini-Me is the "high-end" way to go for making stereo recordings.