Just got back from Oahu yesterday after auditioning a set of Genelec 8040 monitors/7060A sub-woofer & Radar 24 Nyquist recorder yesterday afternoon. I would definitely recommend that combination. The 8040's on their own were quite full sounding and much smoother than the Mackie 824's.
Then, we kicked in the sub and I had never realized that you could hear freqs that low and so well defined. Really quite impressive!
What really opened my eyes & ears was being able to hear the huge difference between the RADAR Nyquist and the Fostex D1624 I've been using for the last five years. It was like comparing 2" tape to cassettes! Sheesh! Absolutely no comparison! And the transport controls were incredibly responsive, as well. I feel like I've stepped through a door into a whole new world of audio. Very cool, very inspiring!
i switched from hr624s to genelec 8030s & sub recently. i felt after using the mackies for 3 years they were too compressed and 'soft' sounding, i wanted better transient reproduction.
the genelecs are much snappier, so better transient detail and clarity in the highs. so much so i found they appear a bit bright at first, and reveal harshness in many recordings that hadnt bothered me much before.
the MDE shape and pods greatly improved the response in my room too. so highly highly reccomend them. i havent tried adams or dynaudios though, since i was so impressed by the genelecs improvement in freq response over square speakers. started a thread here .
I'm in the same camp myself, looking to augment the HR824's perhaps, but not replace.
The original ones from the later 90's sound a buttload better than the new ones do for whatever reason, so if you have the originals, hang on to them. I've heard the newer ones in comparison to the originals I have and wow, big difference.
So on to what other speaker you could get in the price range you mentioned - You should take a look at the BM15's, along with one of their subwoofers. The BM15's sounded really good when I demo'd them, and aren't light years away from the Mackie's in terms of overall imaging, so you won't have to do a major re-learning to get mixing quickly.
A big difference in the mids though. On the Mackie's the midrange can be hard to nail down, but on the BM15's the mids are exactly where you expect them to be, in terms of both frequency and volume when placing in the mix, so I think they've got a good advantage there.
