Airpod pros don’t give you the same experience as a high end setup. But you come to realize you’re enjoying the headphones more than the music itself. Or at least I did.
With the airpod pros the quality and the overall experience is good enough that I don’t even think about them, just whatever music or audio I’m listening to.
Nothing will beat open-back headphones on a good system, but apple's stuff as of late is plenty good.
[0]: https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/apple-airp...
[1]: https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/sennheiser...
For serious listening sessions I will still plug my IEMs into my phone, but the Airpods Pro are just really convenient and sound good enough that at this point, 90% of my mobile listening is done through them. The sound cancellation is nice and better than my sennheiser momentum m2s (audio quality on those is better than the airpod pros but they have apt-x which is the difference maker, but does not exist on ios yet)