Audiophile Active Speakers?

Not a floor stander and you'd have to buy used, but I've been running a pair of Quad 12L Actives for about two years and have been very pleased. They're fantastic all-arounders. I see pairs pop up for around $600 here from time to time.

Today I received my KRK Rokit8 monitors I bought through Amazon. They are internally bi-amped, have some Kevlar like material in the woofer cones ,and tone controls and adjustable gain on the back. I paid $221.40 each including shipping. I hooked them up to my fully balanced JRDG Capri preamp and lit them up. Of course, they are brand new and will need to loosen up some, I imagine, but the sound is really good.
In a 12 x 13 bedroom, they were a little bass heavy so I turned that down one click. Otherwise, they are really delightful.
Like Rockadanny above, I'm starting to wonder if I might want a more high end active monitor for my main system. Very timely thread for me.

It seems like most of the active speakers (ATC included) have a reputation of being on the brighter more etched or revealing side. Is this true?

This is absolutely not true. In fact, the older SEAS tweeters (before ATC came out with their new inhouse ones) are quite sweet sounding. Also, the amp design ATC use is AB with class A bias. It's more organic sounding to me than say Bryston.

What people are talking about is ATCs are tuned real flat with low distortion. The bass is also tuned to be clean and tight rather than boomy or sonorous. So there's no second-harmonic euphony, I suppose. On good quality recordings, this makes them incredibly transparent and natural through the midband, especially. Equally, on crappy recordings, you'll hear the crappy mix. This isn't the fault of the gear rather than the producer!

This banks a lot then on the front-end source/preamp to balance out these characteristics. In a home setting, I agree too much ruler flat gear can be brutal, but it's so easy to find well-balanced sources (say with tube outputs or high class A-biased outputs). It's not at all easy to find pure sounding speakers that don't compromize fidelity in other areas.

I would contact ATC dealers directly rather if you're not having much luck with the distributor, Brad Lund of Lonemountain Audio. Buying used is also an option to reduce the sticker shock. Another brand that works in a similar space with pro and consumer active speakers is PMC, which are also very good.