Audio Interface recommendations under $500

I'm returning yet another item first thing tomorrow morning, After all the time it too to finally get things going my new focusrite sound card sounds absolutely terrible. Shit was playing out of 2 separate channels in Mono sounding like my speakers were getting overloaded. Sounded totally distorted. I'm either missing something here or i got a faulty unit, i bought it as a demo item.

Can Anyone recommend something better no more than 500 bucks? I'm probably going to just stick to making beats for now so a ton of I/O isn't really needed. I just want quality. I was maybe thinking of the Apogee Duet since their converters are top notch and its going to run super smooth running Logic.

I'm gonna see if sweetwater tech support can help me resolve my issues, I think its just a faulty piece because the monitor outs were playing in Mono and sounded like shit. I may swap it for another sapphire 40. You know how it is you always gotta play the game to get a return. Its one of their top sellers as far as firewire interfaces go so either this thing has an unnecessary learning curve to get basic functionality out of the thing or its just a bad piece

The Sapphire 40 may be alot more than what I really need though. I dont have any external gear that doesn't plug into my mac via a USB connection. Honestly I probably only need 1 or 2 mic pres and a couple of 1/4 in jacks. Deep inside i still want all the I/O just in case i need them though, just dont know what the hell i need them for right now. I guess if i needed to track a band i could (if i had like 8 microphones and a soundproof garage lol)

My guy at sweetwater is pretty cool, if you ever buy anything from that company talk to chad dude knows his shit. Hes saying the Sapphire is in his opinion the best unit for what my price range is but he said if i'm willing to sacrifice all the I/O the Duet is a great way to go. The duet is their best selling firewire interface after that its like all the digi boxes than the one i have.

Looks like I'm good, all my problems were because of the settings on the dsp mixer

now its time for me to figure out how to use logic