And what kind of "tech" are you referring to? Lol, they cancel out noise when I stick them in my ears, that's all noise cancelling is, don't let a high price tag fool you into believing there is some superior tech making these better at noise canceling. That's what I'm trying to say. Hundreds of dollars more does not equate to the small difference in sound quality, and even if the quality was magically drastically better, the noise cancelling part is still just noise cancelling, which mine do very well.
The boost in sound quality simply isn't worth the asking price and I believe a lot of people are being fooled, and, quite honestly have no idea what high quality actually sounds like and no idea what to listen for. I had to buy a pair of $300 Audio Tech's for school and while they sounded great, it wasnot a bug enough difference between those and the in-ears I have now to justify the price. Not even close. Also, I have said before I've been a musician my whole, taken audio production classes and worked multi million dollar studios with top of the line equipment, I know what high end audio is and should sound like. If you want to talk about speaker and acoustic space then hell yes money is a great indicator of quality. But with headphones/earbuds you're not getting enough difference between some of these cheaper brands and brands like these Sony's OP is referring to, to justify spending hundreds more. And thousand+ for headphones is absurd, outright I honestly believe you are being hornswaggled. We'll just have to disagree on this one.