Mark Chambers started a great thread on headphones and music. According to an NPR article by an NPR sound engineer I linked in the thread, the NPR guy feels that if you have good hearing, the best headphones to use are on-the-ear, not over-the-ear, headphones because he says some of the lower frequencies will leak out and come back to your ears and give you more a sense of spatiality. And the sound quality is better if the headphones are non-noise cancellling.
for a very limited set of 14 HA users who took a poll in that thread, the preference was for over-the-ear NON- noise cancelling headphones.
So I guess I’m different.
The Sony 1000mx3’s from a number of reviews are currently judged to be the best over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones both for noise cancellation and music quality. Most reviews judge the Microsoft effort to be an also-ran. I got mine because I’m a “Microsoftie” type of guy, I liked the dial control of noise-cancellation and volume, and I mostly listen to talk podcasts so music quality was not much of a concern for me but adequate noise cancellation was. With HA’s with open domes, I couldn’t enjoy my talk podcasts in noisy environments as much as I could by just wearing earbuds or over-the-ear headphones (without ANC).
If you search the forum, you’ll find most people are happy with ANC headphones. If you’re a true discerning audiophile and listen in quiet environments, you may not want the ANC. Perhaps if the store has the right setup and demo models, you can try stuff out in the store and play “noise” through your phone and see how they work in store before going through all the trouble of a second purchase and any further disappointment?