I approached the Creative Aurvana X-Fi set of noise-canceling headphones as a skeptic. First off, it costs as much as the noise-canceling industry standard, the Bose Quiet Comfort 2—a whopping $300. Then, the price seems to be driven by the inclusion of two technologies I could do without: Creative's X-Fi Crystalizer and its X-Fi CMSS-3D sound enhancer. I wasn't counting on the Aurvana X-Fi headphones to eliminate as much ambient noise as the Quiet Comfort 2, but they sure did. To top it off, the Aurvanas are much better-sounding and more powerful than the QC2s. Without a doubt, the Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGards eliminate the most noise of any pair I've tried, including these, but they cost a mind-blowing $450. Given that the QC2 and the Aurvana X-Fi sets perform equally well on the noise-cancellation level, the question of which is better comes down to which sounds better, and the Aurvana headphones, our new Editors' Choice, slam-dunk the Bose Quiet Comfort 2s in terms of audio performance.