57 should not have gain issues. Both of mine are great (and one's a ripoff model). Be careful what you wish for. Remember we're digital and you don't need huge signal coming in to get good signal going out.
That being said, of the interfaces I know of that should be excellent in your price range:
M-Audio MTrack or MTrack II - $99 - Excellent drivers. Good reviews. I believe this is the same unit in top (regular) or face (II) formats...
The MTrack Plus II adds 96k to the game for $149 (the regular MTrack is 48k/24)
The Lexicon Lambada just came down to $100 and gets great reviews, though I've never worked with it
In the $150 range, you have Steinberg's
UR22,
the Scarlett 2i2 (which gets bashed a lot for not having midi, but if you can do without it has decent preamps), and the Mackie Onyx Blackjack (which of course has Onyx pres...)
And of course for only $30 over your budget, you get a local favorite,
the Komplete Audio 6 from Native Instruments. I wanted this one, but got the US1800 because it had more connectivity (which I really didn't need) and was a rack mount (which I did!)
Bottom line: Just about any audio interface out there will work. Lots of people complain about the Lexicon stuff, but lots of people praise the Lambada (don't get that, but it raises flags for me.)
Other than that, Steinberg, PreSonus, Mackie, Focusrite, Tascam, Roland...all have pros and cons, but all have decent gain staging. Sometimes it comes down to "which DAW does it come with" i.e. get a different "lite" version than the one you have or getting your first free one.
Hope this does some help. I know it's a wide-open response, but there's a lot of good stuff out there. If you can get to a local shop that sells several in your price range, tell them you'd like to try out a few. They might even let you take them home if you're really good at getting things repackaged or if they already have some open box units.