I used NS10m's for years (with a really cheap pair of Yamaha consumer 8" bass reflex speakers as ref) and, honest to gosh, I knew my mixes were suffering. (If I had it to do over again, I'm convinced, I would break down and EQ the monitor feed. But the bass is so non-existent, you still can't use them for mixing electronica, downtempo, hip hop, anything with extended bass. But I do use them now for casual listening as well as production work, using the passive, variable EQ curve built into my Yamaha prosumer receiver -- instead of the 'straight wire' button that I used to use, which disengaged the tone controls and even the balance, leaving only the master volume in the signal chain. Nice feature. Wish my cheapo mixing desk had it.)
Anyhow, where I went was to a pair of Event 20/20bas. I found that they improved my mixing about 300% (ok, these things are subjective, but my mixes really had bass and mid-range troubles). Those speakers are quite flat, but some folks think they need a little more dampening. Still, they were very well reviewed, and overall, I really couldn't be happier.
Subsequently, Event came out with a less powerful version for a little mroe than half the money. (Instead of the 200 watts per side biamped design -- 140/60, if I recall -- they halved it to 70/30 per woofer/tweeter.)
Earlier this year, the latest version of that speaker won a shootout of inexpensive NFM's (under a thousand bucks) in EM, as well.
http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_soun...es/index2.html
I think you can pick up a pair for as little as $600 at discount. But don't rule them out just because they're 'too' inexpensive. (You can buy singles, too.)
A little farther up the food chain Studio Precision 8 at about $1300/pair:
http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_even...ion/index.html. ("Event has always made good monitors, and the Studio Precision 8 Active, or ASP8, is as good as any close-field monitor on the market at any price.")
Anyhow, all that said, I've been around here long enough -- as soon as you mention some brands like Event or Mackie, you get a
certain element who come in slagging...
It's actually quite amusing, since, while reasonable people can readily disagree about this sort of thing, and, no doubt, some of the slaggers are actually familiar with whatever the gear in question is, a lot of them are hopeless poseur wannabes who are just repeating something they heard somewhere else.
It's one of the reasons I hang out in places like this. heh