My friend's RS2i was relatively uninsulting to my ears ~2 years ago

I also thought his HD600 sounded very similar to my KOSS 4AAA from 1974 so take that with an entire cup of salt

Regarding the Ultrasone ED9, my first impression a long time ago when I was asked for my opinions, Cambridge CDP to Phonitor, "Is this thing clipping?"

I'll cheat and split this up into to lists:

Crap I haven't owned

1. Audio Technica ATH-W5000 - anorexic sound, oddly unstable imaging
2. Grado GS-1000 - my first purchase was a Grado 125. I liked it and decided to go all out and get the best, which at the time was the RS 1. The RS-1 was marginally better and when the GS-1000 came out I listened to it at a store and became very confused at why someone would make such a thing. I then realized that John doesn't have Joe's ears and is most likely insane.
3. McIntosh RX100 - weird line-arrayish sort of thing with lots of tweeters on top and lots of woofers at the bottom. I was allowed to play a test track, a live recording with clipping and other distortion, to see if the speaker would overaccentuate such things. Oddly it did the opposite -- the whole track was smoothed into a drone, textureless extruded sludge. If Kim Jong Un had been there he'd have asked to have his picture taken with it.
4. MBL Reichstagcrawler, or whatever it's called - I listened to it, I moved around the room a few times and listened again. Yup, it's an omni and yup, it sounds just as mediocre on all sides. Needless to say that between that and the McIntosh abomination I've decided to stick to the point-source concept.
5. Beyerdynamic DT48 - yes, it's already a cliche in this thread. Still, lol, donate it to a museum already.

Crap I've owned
1. Grado RA-1 amp - cheap glued together pointless crap. Would've maybe had a point if it was priced comparably to other cMoys.
2. Shure 535 SE - treble replaced by a quivering sucking abyss, unremarkable over the rest of the frequency range.
3. Sennheiser IE 8 - traded the 535 SE for these, afterwards felt like I'd fallen into an O'Henry short story by way of Kafka.
4. Ultrasone PRO 900 - another ciche, richly deserved. Found them ultra cheap after looking over a bunch of glowing head-fi reviews, decided to give them a go. Listened to them, didn't like them, thought maybe there was something wrong with my ears. Loaned them to a friend for a weekend bus trip, he came back raving about them. Now I'm convinced that there's something wrong with my ears. Saw the measurements, went "aah".
5. Stock Fostex TR20 RP - boring, mushy. Wasn't until I heard modded Fostex till I realized that inhabitants of hf's ortho thread might not have been members of a crazy cult. Or at least that the cult was somewhat rational and had decent membership benefits.

The XR100 is not a line-source. It's a conventional multi-driver forward radiator with four small woofers. The only significant difference between it and a hundred other floorstanders out there are the midranges. Instead of the typical 4-5.5" cone midrange driver or even a large dome midrange ala ATC, they use 10 2" midranges because reasons. An actual floor to ceiling line-source done by a competent designer can sound REALLY good.

I liked the Wisdom/B&G planar strips and that curved array from parts express. Checked the McIntosh website and it was actually the 200 I heard at the show. Not entirely sure what the rationale behind the 200 was, other than maybe sheer volume and power handling.