IMHO, Genelecs or Neumanns are the best in that price range by a large margin, but I haven't heard everything. The only way to really decide is to demo them and figure out what works for you - ideally, good commercial music should sound good to you, and the speakers should make it "easy" to make your decisions when you're working.
Fixing/improving the room will improve the sound, usually more than speakers. I did both (and sonarworks) in the same ~6 month period, and they were all significant. The room upgrades were the biggest improvement, and I bought & returned several sets of speakers before I decided to keep a pair. The funny part of those experiments was that the hifi speakers in my living room (which I like there) sound like garbage in my room.
If I were buying today in that price range, I'd order and demo the 8330A, KH120 II DSP, and maybe the Lyd48 just to hear a few sets in my room (there are technical differences that could go either way, not just that they're 3-way). The good news is that those are all roughly the same size, so once you figure out where to put them, you can use the same stands for all 3.
Demoing them does involve working on them. I think it's ideal if you can spend some time getting used to each set and actually make something with each set while you're demoing them. Once you've done all of them, I think the proof is in the pudding...meaning that you should listen to the things you made on each one in a separate listening environment that you're really familiar with. If you usually listen to music in your car, play the recordings there to decide. Same if you usually listen on airpods or headphones or a living room hifi or whatever. Ideally also a couple other places just to get a sense of it (you can take your recordings to a hifi shop to listen to their setups if you live near one).
Picking new speakers is not, and should not, be a quick thing. Enjoy the process.
FWIW, I vehemently hate the whole idea of VSX. I can't figure out why you'd want to use headphones and emulate a room. That being said, working on headphones (or even more so IEMs) without a room simulation is a viable choice. And it's a lot cheaper. Thanks to the chi-fi stuff, you can get an "endgame" level monitoring setup for about a grand if you're okay working in IEMs. It still takes some experimentation to figure out which IEMs...and they usually take some individualized correction that you can do with stepped sine waves or sweeps...and I think it's easier to make decisions (and more enjoyable) if you listen through an HRTF crossfeed plugin. CanOpeneer is my favorite. Waves NX also works well, but not the ones that emulate specific studios/speakers....those are nothing but a gimmick. There are others that might work better, or possibly none of them will work for you - it's really based on how well their models fit your physical head and ears. But, it's worth a demo.
The cool thing about really getting to grips with an IEM setup is that you don't necessarily have to be as picky about your speakers (or, to a degree, your room). Use the speakers for inspiration/vibe and the IEMs to actually make detailed decisions. IMO, it makes a lot more sense to use them as a pair than to put up 2 sets of speakers (which will never both be accurate in the room, no matter how good they are).
