Active noise cancellation necessarily loses fidelity because it's imperfect technology. Passive 30db of noise reduction is a lot better. Likewise, cramming your

Active noise cancellation necessarily loses fidelity because it's imperfect technology. Passive 30db of noise reduction is a lot better. Likewise, cramming your entire DAC into one little chip is also a recipe for decreasing output quality. As to quality, Shure IEMs are very close to as good as it gets, so even in the best case, apples cans wouldn't be better (though the speaker in their teardown doesn't look too good).