Mine arrived yesterday, and I set it up last night. It is the dark gray; in fit and finish it puts all my other equipment to shame. I plugged in my Stax 900, which has sat in its box for two years, and was relieved to hear that there was no imbalance issue. I spent a couple of hours A/Bing the Stax gear against my HD 800 and Eddie Current Super 7. I connected the Stax gear through the Marantz's balanced output and the HD setup through the RCA output, using silver cables that differed only in the plugs. It was pretty easy to yank off one set of phones and put the other on.
My initial impression is that the two sets of gear have similar tonal signatures and huge resolving power. After awhile, and perhaps owing to the BHSE's having warmed up, I became aware that the Stax gear was doing a number of things better. For instance, even though my tube complement on the Super 7 has taken the edge off the HD 800's treble and boosted its bass response, a vocal passage by a jazz singer had sibilance that did not show up on the Stax gear. It also seemed to me that the Stax gear had higher resolution, including in the treble region, which was pretty interesting since this was accomplished without repeating the occasional sibilance of the HD 800. It was clear to me that the singer's inflections were coming across more clearly through the Stax gear. I also listened to some classical, but by that point I was getting tired of the A/B stuff and just felt like listening to the music.
!
