Just curious - what's the advantage of the noise cancelling feature when listening in a quiet environment (your home)? I'm using Beyer DT 880 Pros, which I guess are decidedly old-school without noise cancelling.
Simple answer to that is - not much
I have about 40 pairs of headphones but none of them have ANC.
Some are closed-back which obviously block out a lot of external noise but are no comparison to ANC.
But my end-user requirement for an ANC headphone is very specifically to first be effective at blocking out noise, even without using them to listen to music with at the same time and secondly, to listen to music with and without ANC activated.
So the ANC feature for me at least has to be class-leading.
I decided they would be a good investment to avoid noise from irritating neighbours, especially ones with power-washers. Christ on a bike that noise as akin to fingernails being dragged accross a blackboard afaiac. Arrrg. All my neighbours seem to have and use them on a regular basis. Bigger arrrrg. They should be fkg banned outright as an environmental noise polluter.
I tried the ANC briefly with the Sony Xm4's and wasn't impressed but I think I set my expectations too high and compared them to the almost zen-like silence that my professional, moulded-to-my-ear canal noise-defenders gives. I don't use those much becasue I just don't like things sticking in my lugholes.
I suppose if you wanted to achieve the darkest noisefloor possible then you could activate ANC when listening to music in an already quiet environment, when you're listening to ambient music and don't want to hear bird noises etc...or b@stard neighbours with power-washers
