Headphone trick

[u/cedar_cinders]

TL;DR: use equalizer feature to lower headphone audio below the lowest level

When I’ve got a migraine and still have to be in a non-silent environment, i like to have noise cancelling headphones on playing music quietly, as I find it to be less stimulating to have a chill song to listen to than random background noise. However, if the audio is too clear and/or loud, I can’t stand it. Sometimes when I’m super sensitive to sound, even the lowest volume level is too loud.

I used to use an older pair of headphones with lower quality audio, so it was muffled and didn’t bother me as much, but I upgraded to the Bose quietcomfort ultras recently because of the better noise cancelling. The audio quality was so much better that it felt like the sound was echoing through my head and I couldn’t stand it. Discovered I can use the equalizer feature in the Bose app to lower the volume further! Or just lower the volume for everything but bass (which bothers me less). It’s noticeably quieter to have everything set to the lowest equalizer volume than it is to just them all set to regular equalizer volume.

I also found that there’s a slider so that I can specifically set noise cancelling a comfortable level (sometimes I am willing to feel more “pressure” from it in return for less ambient noise, sometimes it’s too much.)

Maybe this is obvious to others, but it’s something that makes having a migraine just a little more bearable for me.

[u/broccoli-1]

Such a good tip! I'll chime in with one of my own: the sound assistant app (https://apps.samsung.com/appquery/appDetail.as?appId=com.samsung.android.soundassistant). It's been a godsent! It lets you pick out apps & you can lower their minimum sound, similarly to the equalize feature on the headphones. Downside is I think it's only for samsung, but apps like this might exist for other phones too. The upside is you can use the app for headphones/earphones that don't have the equalizer feature. With the app I lowered the volume of youtube/spotify/netflix/etc to 60-70% and it's saved me so much extra head pain.