I spent more than 1 year looking for a decent headphone, but it looks like the industry wasn’t able to produce a headphone that fits my use case. I tried cheap headphones from Oneodio, I tried the Anker Soundcore Q30, then I tried more expensive ones too: Sony WH-1000XM4, WH-1000XM5, Bose QuetComfort SE, Sennheiser Momentum 4, but no luck.

My use case: I use the headphones during work, so 6-10 hours a day. Because ANC irritates my ear, I have to be able to turn it off and I want a headphone that has a great sound when the ANC is OFF in wired mode.

I don not care if the sound quality is worse when ANC is ON - I’ll only use it when I fly. But I really want a great sound quality when listening from jack 3.5 (or USBC) when noise cancellation is off.

Even the Momentum 4 disappointed me. Once its internal digital processing is off, it sounds flat.And when powered on, no matter the ANC setting (transparency/NC slider), I still feel that annoying air pressure effect in my ears.

So my question is: Does a headphone exist that delivers incredible passive-wired sound while offering ANC and Bluetooth as secondary features?