GrussGott

In case this helps anyone, I recently did a shoot-out of the QC35s, the new Sony MDR1000Xs, and the B&W P7 wireless which are not noise-cancelling. I tested them in many, many scenarios with all kinds of sounds:

* over head jets you could hit with a rock
* ambulance sirens
* loud cafe sounds (glasses, conversations)
* Monster air purifier
* quiet room

We're all different but the net-net for me was I determined that I prefer great sound with occasional background noise to mediocre sound with lowered low frequencies.

The only scenarios I would want noise-cancelling headphones for are:

(1.) A loud noisy office where I don't listen to anything - in that case I'd use the ANC along with white noise played in them.

(2.) Silence in a room with airconditioning running or loud "whoosh" noises but no variable higher frequency noises like voices or glasses clinking.

In all other scenarios, i.e, where I'm listening to a source like music or a show, I prefer great sound with the occasional intrusion of background noise. This is because ANC doesn't block voices or variable noises like glasses clinking or engine whine. Also, the ANC has huge performance-dip right at the frequency of human voices (you can see this graphed on innerfidelity) - I wonder if that's for legal reasons? But the result is, yes airplane white noise is gone, but voices and screaming babies aren't. Those are the things I care most about cancelling. With the P7s, they sound so great and the passive cancelling is good enough that at even moderate levels you don't hear a thing. The QC35s and the Sony just don't have this type of immersion.

So after using noise cancelling headphones for 4 years for flights, etc I'm now off them because they just don't sound very good, and I picked the P7 wireless which sound fantastic. Watching a TV show on an airplane for example, I hear all kinds of sound effects and noises that I just don't hear with the QC35s or the Sonys and, ultimately, that's much more immersive to me than not hearing the airplane engines at very low volumes.

So for travel, for me, it's the Bowers & Wilkens wireless P7s - they're the headphones I look for excuses to wear.