My two pennies as I haven't seen it mentioned yet...
I used Peltors, 8006 from memory, during student days, and found them absolutely fine. BUT (and this may just have been my bad luck) I did have some compatibility issues with some of the mixed bag of headsets the instructors used. So I switched to DC10's, because that's what everybody else had. No complaints about those either, and no compatability problems. And they are very sturdy
Sorry if this was just too obvious for anyone else to mention, but I guess the advice is to make sure whatever you buy will work with whatever else there is in the plane.
I know the OP talks about "after many years" so apologies if this is a bit of thread-drift, but would the ANR advice be the same for a new / less experienced pilot? Or would you recommend passive until more able to recognise a "sick" engine note?