In processes for recovering one or more xylene isomers and isomerizing the remaining isomers for recycle, the isomerate is distilled to provide a toluene-containing overhead, a mid-boiling fraction containing C.sub.8 aromatics and a bottoms fraction containing C.sub.8 aromatics and C.sub.9+ aromatics. The mid-boiling fraction is recycled to the unit for recovering the sought xylene isomers and has sufficiently low content of C.sub.9+ aromatics that the separation feed to the unit for recovering the sought xylene isomers contains up to about 500 ppm-mass C.sub.9+ aromatics. The processes provide a high quality xylene isomer product while achieving at least one of debottlenecking, energy savings and capital savings.