IME most training planes have poor intercoms. Many don't have an intercom - the headsets are all (presumably) wired up in parallel and you can get interference problems with a mixture of types.
I am an electronics design engineer too, been doing it for over 30 years, but have never really gone into avionics audio - the way it's wired is really weird at times.
The 17-79 was a comfy headset, but the attenuation was poor. The ANR feature contributed very little. A Bose X is a complete revelation in comparison, and their current mike is a further revelation over the previous one (presumably due to better noise cancellation). However, despite recent drops, it's about 2x the price of the Pilot one.