Aspen is always there at NAMM or AES to give demos of the ViPRE and the Glory Comp. They have em there with the plexi top so you can see everything inside, and they'll point out what everything is and what it all does.
Yeah, the ViPRE is balanced all the way through, and has a bunch of unique features like the variable impedance selector although that isn't new you get a lot of options and you don't have to hook up jumpers. The rise time feature plays with the transients of the signal and lets you smooth out the sound of the mic. There aren't any pots on the front panel, all the controls are switches. You get 70 dB of gain with two rotary switches that let you dial it down to single dB adjustments.
I think this is one of those boxes that companies don't make because you can't make a lot of money on it. This is the kind of thing that some big shot engineer would have custom built. IMHO The ViPRE is an over the top ultimate mic pre, that gets close to the land of audiopholery without crossing that line.
Honestly I could see myself in the future having a rack of API's, or just a good console for recording drums, and a ViPRE, and that being it for mic pres.
The one thing I see that this pre doesn't give you is grit. Not distortion, just that good old "hitting the 1567a too hard" grit.