If you are going to drive them a little hard then the MA Silver 2 is not the speaker to look at. Monitor Audio makes some great speakers and I bought my daughter a set but they just don't play too loud compared to most others in their price range. Also if you want a little hot tweeter it's not the Monitor Audio's. I personally don't think they'd be great for studio monitors. A very nice speaker, easy to listen to, but not the most revealing. Not heard the JBL but unless JBL has gone another direction which I don't think has happened, they'll likely play loud and probably a little hot on the top but that can be controlled some and with techno or electronic music maybe more to your liking. If you can compare a set of Paradigm in your budget try them. They play loud and are often hard to beat in their price range. I personally prefer Monitor Audio over Paradigm but if you could compare them side by side the Monitor Audio's sound dull, but they're not; the Paradigm are easier to drive and model to model they will play deeper and can play louder without loosing it. The new Elac Uni-fi UB5 is something to look into as well.