My previous experience with lowfi/mid-fi audio is that I own/have owned Sony V6 headphones, Sennheiser HD580 headphones, Energy Take 5 5.1 home theater set, Monsoon PM9 speakers, Klipsch PM 2.1 and the Logitech Z623. My tastes run towards ambient/accoustic & rock music, so I was interested in smooth mids and accuracy, rather than boomy mids/lows and loudness. I tried most of the leading PC speakers at the local store and all of them left me wanting because of lack of decent mids.
Since this is my first day with them, I will withhold judgement until I finish auditioning them. My take so far is that while the mid and highs are good, the bass seems a bit on the light side. The sound is revealing to the point of being somewhat fatiguing. Maybe I need to acclimate to these monitor speakers, which admittedly are for recording, not listening. The sound is forward and revealing, so it makes badly recorded sound stand out that much more, and exposed the deficiency in my soundcard as well. Anything less than 256k mp3s sounded crude and artificial. With a good source & soundcard, I'm guessing these will positively sing.
The BX8a Deluxe were on sale at 219, which is the upper limit of what computer speakers go for. The model I got is discontinued and the new ones are BX8 D2 costing double, supposedly with sturdier caps that don't burn out so quickly. Considering the price, these are decent value, but not overwhelmingly good. I was expecting to be blown away by the 8" woofer, but my guess is that the size is more marketing than actually put to good use. If things don't get noticeably better, I may go for the Swan M50s, which are around 280.