I never expected there to be no correlation though

Was surprising to me too. None of the expensive sets deviated very far from the "ideal" frequency response so at least they all likely did sound pretty good. So its not like if you spend a good bit of money your going to end up with a bad sounding set.

Definitely yeah to the benefits of noise cancellation, exterior noise ruins what you are listening to, so if you really want to hear the sound you gotta have it isolated right.

but it does have lights that change color

:D