I have not heard them side by side. I did own the xa7es for 2 years, and a good friend with a similar system had the 9000. I felt that the xa7es had a better sound. It's output stage just seemed to be much cleaner and the imaging a little better. The xa7es had mosfet rather than op-amp output stage which I think attributed to it's good sound.
The 9000 was pretty impressive on sacd, and I thought it's cd playback was good, but not up to the level of the xa7es. It had a mild case of the mass market midfi haze. from it's output stage. You can get the output stages replaced by modwright or audiomod.
Since you are not looking to move to sacd, I would stick with the xa7es. If you want to improve on the xa7es, I personally would go for an xa777es (1500 used), a resolution audio cd-50 (1300 used), or an es-777 (1500 used). These won't be huge jumps.
The 9000 was pretty impressive on sacd, and I thought it's cd playback was good, but not up to the level of the xa7es. It had a mild case of the mass market midfi haze. from it's output stage. You can get the output stages replaced by modwright or audiomod.
Since you are not looking to move to sacd, I would stick with the xa7es. If you want to improve on the xa7es, I personally would go for an xa777es (1500 used), a resolution audio cd-50 (1300 used), or an es-777 (1500 used). These won't be huge jumps.