Active monitors: Adam A7, JBL LSR4326P Pak, Alesis ProLinear 820DSP, or Dynaudio BM5A

Mackie active monitors (Mackie) have an excellent name.

Yamaha is also well considered (Yamaha).

You should have absoluely no problem getting a satisfying active monitor for under $1000.

Edit: also, check out this link for a thread that is right up your alley.

Pro monitors are typically active biamped speakers, making them way more cutting edge than most typical hifi speakers. They're also just as colored and as varied as hifi speakers. They really do need audition. If you buy used, you can pick up mackie hr624 and a preamp for well under $1000, especially if you take a chance and try to buy single speakers instead of a pair, which will sell for more than two singles, usually. They sounded fantastic when I auditioned them a few years ago.

The adams are ahead of all other monitors under 1000$, it took me almost 1 year to find my monitors, and if the A7 wouldnt have been released, i wouldnt have gotten a pair at all.
You can read lots of positive impressions on gearslutz.com. They dont offer detail and extremly exact soundstaging as above 2000$ monitors do, but they got everything else as right as it gets. They sound very natural, refined and lack any coloring. I never heard such uncolored monitors for that price.
They do exceptionally well with all kind of music, from classic to hip hop.

Just have a look at this:



The text says the dent between 100 & 150hz is a problem of their room (it was a "real life" measuring, no specialy damped measuring room).

Measurements can be deceptive. See mackie hr824 graph:



Many groups publish graphs like this, I can hardly believe all of them. Check the smoothing, the gating, distance to speaker, splicing of graphs. No one publishes that info. There isn't even a y axis scale or legend for the Adams graph. Your best friend if your own pair of ears. Do your best to audition.

I'll throw in a vote for Dynaudio because I like their BM15As.

Also, a vote for the Mackie HR-824s (and probably the 624s, if they're similar enough).

I'm a fan of neutral but detailed sound signatures, so that's my bias.

The 624 are like the 824 but with a warmer midrange that sounds fantastic on classical strings, and with a more distorted bottom end. Not badly distorted, mind you, better than many competitors like the KRKs and Events TR and ASP series, but not as clean as the 824. 624s had better imaging in the setup I heard, but that could have been setup specific.

I have a pair of the Adam Artist nearfield monitors and I am very impressed with them. They are musically impressive and their build quality is outstanding.

I realize the Adam Artists are beyond your stated budget but I raise this example as my experience with this company's products.

I am awaiting the delivery of the Sub8 subwoofer to complete my system.

Aryaah

I prefer the Adam A7 and ANF-10 on top of the P11 and S2A and on top of every studio monitor I heard, but I didn't hear the really highest end stuff.
On these two, when the input is good, it's vey good, If the input is bad, it's very bad. This and their known translation abilities makes them the #1 monitors in my book. Nothing that I heard is as dynamic/fast and revealing like these two bastards. The genelecs are close, but I think the tone of both the old series (can't remember the name of it) and the new "egg shaped" series ain't as presice as the Adams. I prefer the tone of the yamaha HS-50M, and would probably purchace them as well as the Adams (currently auditioning ANF-10 in my house, soon I hope to audition A7 next to them, but heard both for a total of few hours in the stores on different days)

I heard the room correcting JBL's and they are total crap. I turned them off after about 30 sec of listening.

PS: frequency response doesn't show energy storage over time. It's more of a sale tool then real spec these days. Spectral decay graph is at least as important to see, because annomalies over time can't be corrected by EQ, frequency response can be. I don't even bother to look at monitor specs beside +-3dB down frequency of the bass response. When you are listening you are listening to both, so your ears are the only real evaluation tool.
I prefer fast,tight and articulate unbalanced speaker then a balanced slow speaker to start with, unless it's too bass light. Anyway, there's always a need for EQ to fine adjust the product to the environment and user anyway, if one knows how to do it right. Behringer DEQ2496 uses a true response graphic (unlike analog graphics) and very good parametric and is an essential low cost tool.

I've heard the Adams- They are good- they take a long time to fully run in but once they do....

I've listened to the lower end JBLs I found that the highs were a bit rolled off

Dynaudios are good- Well balanced and detailed.

But if you are wiling to do a few mods- Get a pair of KRK (i have the V4) I've changed the caps to Nichicon, xindak silver fuses, 18ga. copper in cotton. With Stillpoints ERS on the caps-
It has it's good points over the ADAM~ It's a lot more open but still doesn't go as high as the ribbon tweeters of the ADAMs. Bass is deep for the size of the driver....... It ended up costing me around $750 Aus Dollars. (approx $615 US)

Infact, I cut a bit from the supers with the ANF-10, they are a bit exagerrated. On high powered drum passages you can hear the cymbals too loud and in your face next to the rest of the drumkit. It unstables the soundstage, I see this as a fault, not as a plus of extra extension.
However, I don't see any reason to be anymore open then the Adams, as they have a correct balance between highes and whatever below. I see the ANF-10 as a tool that should deliver results. They are not perfect, they have their color, and not always so nice to listen to. But I don't see a professional need to be more open, they portarait the "substance" and soundtage of the recording very well and very, very different from mix to mix even within the same album. I can't say that anything I've heard does that even close to these, and it's my #1 on the "professional" list. They are very rough sounding, and very very resolute. Just watched Star Wars III (you probably know the standarts of skywalker wrench studios), and it clarified certain feelings I have about the Adams when I went through lots of recordings in the past 2 days:

Resolution: 10
Input material sensitive: 10
Bass extention: hmmm... compared to what? (-: They don't go very low, but respond great to a bit EQ, no artifacts that I can hear.
Bass quality: depends on amps a lot!
Naturalness: 8
Soundstaging reliability ("can I trust the image I'm creating with them?"): 10
Balance reliability: * Still didn't finish a mix I had to translate elsewhere, but you know their reputation.

The color of the ANF-10 shows as extra hard "edge" to sounds, as if it's almost too dynamic. It was more obvious on the sound effects in Star Wars, as their mix is very dynamic to exagerate this sonic signature. I think that for checking and adjusting timbre for critical acoustic music (pianos, and everything classical), I would go with the Yamahas MS-50M (not the 80) and good headphones, but balance and position with the Adams. I don't know about tracking, it's an interesting topic.
Going to try the A7 in my environemt soon, I hope, but I suspect quite close results.

Another very interesting thing I'm noticing, is the sensitivity to phasing issues. I am now listening to Red Hot's "Give It Away", and of coarse it sound total crap, as it should, but now it's the first time I hear the overheads are phasing, big time! Another thing is that when you downmix stereo to mono, they really collapse and level decreases more then my other speakers... Interesting. I'll try to do a mono-compatible mix on these.

I think the KRK V series sound very bad at "stock" state... Do you agree?
How much does this mod helps?

The KRK sounded pretty bland and with a bit of BG noise unmod'ed. I still think the highs are lacking detail once modded- I have been thinking about removing the standard IEC receptacle and giving it an ACME cryo'ed, fast diodes and if there are op amps - i'll try those burson HDAM modules

I've used other active monitors in the past and unless you are running them in balanced mode it sounds a bit lifeless.
I ran it - Krell kps20i CD player>>balanced out with oyaide PA-02 cables with silver plated neutrik XLRs>> into KRK V4 (volume was adjusted with the gain on back of speakers). It's a minimalist approach to hi-fi- no preamp, extra power amps or speaker cables.