I'd like to get my hands on a few and give them a longer listen.

I've heard the Mackie line and liked them in the shop. I agree about seeming on the bright side, treble-wise, but hard to judge when there's no familiar room or ancillaries to help.

I was also surprised by how good the JBL line sounded. Less treble emphasis, smooth mids.

The prices are reasonable. Lots of audio bang for the buck.

I wish I had the budget to grab a couple pair and really get a chance to do a serious home listening session.

My friend Wayne uses Yamaha NSM-10s in his home studio. He has employed the toilet paper tweak over the tweeters to help tame the treble for years. A few years ago, after reading about a treble "fix" in a forum, we changed the polarity of his tweeters which made the speakers much more listenable. After I showed him the $1.20 tweak Sam Tellig wrote about, he couldn't listen to the speakers without the coins in place after that - it seems that the coins sing along with the music, adding a pleasing resonance, resulting in a perceived improvement in dimensionality. These changes make the Yamaha NSM-10s tolerable.

I had a pair of Paradigm active speakers for a while. They were the smaller of the two models offered. I bought them used and they were fairly cheap. I thought they sounded good for what they were, but they didn't last long in the system. I tried to buy a pair of ATC which would have been a much better representation of the medium, but it fell through.

Lots of studios are active, but I'm not sure that a good endorsement.