Can anyone recommend a good pair of noise cancelling headphones that won't break the bank? Looking to spend less than $200

A good pair of sealed headphones generally work better than the noise cancelling ones. Have a look at AKG and Sennheiser over at Headphone.com.

The Sennheiser 280HD Pros are sealed headphones that block out tons of outside noise. If you look at this graph:

http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare...p;graphID[]=393

So, noise cancelling is better, but not tons better, and many noise-cancelling phones have mediocre sound, plus batteries to deal with, etc.

If you don't mind ear-canal phones, they're in the "Goodbye Cruel World" zone of isolation:

http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare...p;graphID[]=393

The Shures are canal phones, the Sennheiser are the noise cancelling set from the previous graph. Canal phones pretty much remove you from this audio plane of existance. I'm not keen on sticking things deep into my ears, though.

I'm not familiar with the noise canceling headphones but I have had both the AKG 81DJ and the Senn 280 pro. Out of those two I liked the AKG by a little bit. When I want to shut out the rest of the world my preference is IEMs. I use Altec Lansing iM716s.

I like the AKGs better soundwise, but the Senns are much less painful with glasses on.

The Senns are more comfortable for sure. That's one reason I like the IEMs, they beat the heck out of both in comfort.

I would seriously consider a pair of in-ear isolating earphones instead, such as those made by Etymotic Research. They do a far better job of blocking out noise you don't want to hear than phones that use active noise cancelling technology. I have a pair of ER-6i (which you can get from Amazon for around $80) that I absolutely love. Not only do they do a great job of blocking our sound (whether you're listening to music or not), but they are some of the better and more uncolored headphones I've had the pleasure of using.

Since your budget is $200, I'd consider the ER-4P.

I'll second Peter's recommendation (especially since I was the one who got him those Etymotics ). While wearing Etymotics I've had someone behind me almost yelling my name and it took them tapping me on the shoulder to realize they were there. They block out between 34-36dB, which is significantly more more than any consumer noise-cancelling headphone on market, I believe.

The ER-6 and the iM716 are fairly similar from what I have read. The Altec Lansing is based on Etymotic Research technology.

I would have to think the ER would be a great IEM to have.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, folks