Laj,
Let me just warn you that I design and build speakers, so I come to this with a definite "perspective". But I really do think it's the right one.
If you search around for some of my post you'll see that I firmly believe for many, many reasons that loudspeakers are by far the weakest link in most every monitoring chain, so they require the most consideration.
Electronica has special demands because it's both dynamic and synthetic. The kind of IDM and ambient that you and I are into is especially dynamic, akin to live jazz or classical recordings. But the synthetic side allows us to create sounds which are not common in live music, or even common in nature at all. Beyond this you're making music which is as likely to be played in a club as in a car or living room. Finding a loudspeaker which can encompass all of these demands is not trivial.
I build speakers, so I'm very familiar with the strengths and limitations of the designs and components commonly used in Tannoys, Events, Mackies, and the rest. They are far from outstanding. Most of these monitors are simply designed to have flat frequency response and little else. True linearity is much more than flat response, and actually quite difficult to achieve. Top that off with the fact that we are asking this for music which often has significant content below 40Hz or even 30Hz.
You read a lot about "translatability" with respect to monitors. Well, as most mastering engineers know, the best translatability comes from a monitoring system which most closely represents the actual recorded waveform. This is why they are using $30,000+ B&W, Quested, etc., speakers.
OK, I'll stop my lecturing now.
I'm sure you don't have $30k+ to lay down, neither do I. But something more in the range of $1k and some judicious spending can get you much closer to the truth than your average nearfield ever will.
Here are some suggestions I have made in the recent past. They are speaker kits which are easily built and can get you into the world class ballpark at middle class prices:
http://www.speakercity.com/sc_kits.shtml
Scanspeak 7, Raven 7, Scan Speak MTM-18
http://www.zalytron.com
look in Kits/Premium for Wonder-R, Aria 6 RW
They look similar to nearfield monitors in that they have woofers and tweeters (though the Raven is a ribbon tweeter), but this is where the similarity ends. The drivers and components in the models I've suggested are vastly superior. I know they're quite expensive compared to what you've been looking at, but the linearity of these speakers will leave something like
a Mackie HR824 in the dust. They're passive, so you need an amp as well. But, as I've said, sacrificing on the amp quality for speaker quality will get you much further on a given budget since speakers have such embarrassingly poorer performance specs than electronics.
I particularly endorse the dual woofer designs since accurate deep bass REQUIRES surface area - the laws of physics tell us there is no way around it. The next step of course would be subwoofers, but I'll leave it for now. Hope all this hasn't ruined your day.
barefoot
PS - And did I forget to mention the sheer
p l e a s u r e of listening to music through a transparent system.... ahhhhh.
