Went to listen to the Z7 earlier at the Sony building in Ginza. I was able to use my music files, but out of a balanced sony PHA-3 (ES9018 dac) via OTG.
Subjective impressions were that I thought it was neutral overall, but had some technical issues. The treble lacked a little sparkle or detail, probably due to the 4khz dip. The low bass was accurate enough, but lacking in detail and texture. Overly polite, but not distorted sounding. It might have been the source, but compared to Marv's impressions I found the imaging to be good enough horizontally, but there was no depth to the music. In fact vocals sounded a bit hollow. I actually think the MA900 (distorted or not), might be more preferable to my tastes because of its treble and better depth.
The thing is though, here it's sold for 55,000 JPY, around $515 so I actually find the price to alright since it seems to be around the same level as the old denon D2000 but with a totally different sound. It doesn't really compare to the flagships from Senn and Hifiman.
