Hey DJ,
Another take on this is, do you want to hear what the recording/mixing engineer did? Obviously you cannot spend what the big studios do, but for all the project studios out there, the Mackie HR824 is well respected. You can find them for about $1200 which is over your limit, but then they include the amps. I have not searched for any reviews of the smaller (cheaper) HR624. This review - granted it was a few years back - gave them pretty high marks.
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/0B7FAE7ED3205D3C86256AE100044F41
I don't know if that address will work, you can go to the website and search arhives for Mackie HR824 to get the comparison review of 10 models of nearfield monitors.
I can say that my brother-in-law got the JBL LSR28P and I don't think that highly of them. And I like my M3Ti even though they are not perfectly flat.
