We had the opportunity to compare the L700's, the 007's and the 009's with both the Stax amp and the new Trilogy amp. The results were really interesting (I met Paul from Stafford there and we both came to exactly the same conclusions- and the differences weren't subtle).
First off using the Stax amp:
Moving from the 700's to the 007's to the 009's brought a decent step up in SQ. interestingly the 700's and the 009's had the same sound signature where the 007's sounded like they came from a different manufacturer...being smoother and warmer sounding.
Moving to the Trilogy brought some really big surprises:
First off the Trilogy was superior in every way, being far more transparent and real with much better bass especially. Bearing this in mind this is where the big shock came.
Going back to the 700's first, they were much improved being both smoother but also much more detailed and dynamic.
Swapping to the 007's - wow they sounded really good! With the Stax amp they were a bit warm and muddy, but with the Trilogy they were really impressive. They still fall short of my Utopias with the EAR HP4 though.
After the 007's I was really looking forward to getting to the 009's, surely if the 007's became that good the 009's were going to blow us away.....
Err nope! They sounded awful - bright, brash, overly bright top end and thin. The 007's totally trounced them, in fact the 700's were better with the much more superior Trilogy. Again the difference wasn't subtle. Myself and Paul swapped back and forward and every time we put the 009's on they were whipped back off again straight away. The sound was afwul, if I didn't know what they were I would have said they were a £100 pair of phones.
What we found (then we spoke to another chap who agreed 100%) was the best Stax sound by a long way was the 007's with the Trilogy, then the 009's with the Stax amp, with the L700's/Trilogy almost equal to the 009/Stax combo.
But we both agreed that our Utopias with his GSXii and my HP4 were better than all of them.
