I'm in the market for noise-cancelation headphones

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I suggest staying away from Sennheiser as well, they're well known for the Sennheiser Veil(tm). Lowe pawned a pair of HD595s to get A900s, and he says the 595s couldn't compare. Even though both are $200 headphones.

Sennheiser makes exceptionally nice headphones. Whether or not they sound veiled depends entirely on your expectations and how the headphone's frequency response works with your own ears. Headphones like the 5XX and 6XX series are very precisely tuned, and obviously this won't work for everybody. I'd suggest listening for yourself before passing judgment.

Noise-canceling headphones block noise by using a microphone to pick up ambient noise and then reversing the polarity and playing the sound back into the ear, neutralizing (so to speak) the ambient noise. In lower quality headphones, the effect can be noticeable.

Of course, high quality in-ear monitors are preferable to any noise canceling headphone, from both decibel reduction and sound quality standpoints.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Sure they can, if they're good enough. A pair of ER4s or E500s sounds just as good as any full-size headphone, only smaller. Certainly, a pair of custom molded Ultimate Ears or Sensaphonics monitors sound better than most other headphones, period.

There's nowhere I can't reach.