The way this question is worded makes it hard to answer, quite frankly. The reality is that even if regular headphones do sound better, most of the time you are going to want the effects of noise cancellation. Think about it, unless you are listening to music in isolated areas where ambient noise is literally not an issue at all, you will want the benefits of models that block out external noise. Of course, you will see some models out there that will allow you to disable or turn off the noise cancellation.