The 009 is the best all around phone I have heard. There are fun aspects to my other phones which I will still enjoy, like classical on the HE90 and R10, rock on the LCD-2, but the 009 is great at everything. No harshness for me at all. It actually is smoother than the SR-Omega I think. On the subject of harshness, after chasing it in my system for a long time, I found it disappeared after I stopped drinking caffeine (due to getting sick, just have not started back up). Maybe I should sell this knowledge as a secret tweak (: