Wow an 8-year-old thread comes to life! Head-Fi alerts sure work, I got an email about this! I love my ATH AD2K and still listen to it all the time, especially for classic album rock. While many would disagree with me, I think it renders electric guitar licks even better than my button Grado RS1's. The Who, The Doors ... nothing better for these. See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me ...
But Stax makes the best HPs in the world with the right amp, even better than my beloved Orpheus (except for wide sound-stage choral works, especially live recordings, where nothing can touch the Orpheus). My 007's and a Kerry-built BHSE with vintage late-breakup Mullards and OMG the sound is amazing. I understand 009's are even better, only heard them briefly at meets.
My knowledge is as old as this thread -- I have not purchased anything in years, and do not listen much at meets ... I go to meets to drink, see old friends, drink, gossip, eat, drink, and look at the girls. Oh there are no girls. Did I mention drink? Luckily Kerry knows what bars to go to after the meets to see the girls. We talk about curves. Frequency-response curves that is.
Sorry I can't help more. My advice -- buy used Stax phones and used amps designed for Stax (not necessarily Stax brand) and never look back. Spend good money on good tubes and good source material. Do not believe the people who tell you hi-res sources make no difference, Nyquist blah blah (and anyway they don't really understand Nyquist, they only think they do ... if Nyquist were actually true then telephone calls would last forever because the bandwidth of a telephone line is limited and the Fourier transform of a function with finite support on the real line has itself infinite support -- but when my ex-wife hangs up on me the phone call is definitely over), hi-res files typically come from better-mastered sources and that's the difference, the time and care in mastering. When people doubt me I let them listen to my flacs of Hotel California and Enter Sandman, both of which came from DVD-A's, and then they believe. I have been accused of having access to the master tapes -- which I don't. In my fantasy life I am good buddies with various members of the Eagles and Metallica, but unfortunately not in the real world.