Jp1208, I received the Reference 9s yesterday. They are the extended bass version and I'm burning them in now. I plan to put about 100 hours on them before doing any critical listening. I am running an APL Denon 3910 (the latest version) with balanced interconnects from Ridge Street Audio (Poiema III). The interconnects are silver, but in my system, they are not bright. I'm running my APL Denon direct to the Nuforce amps. Once they are burned in, I will compare the extended bass version with the standard and report back!