> When earbuds came on the market

I switched to active noise cancelling headphones and earbuds several years ago (2015-ish) primarily because they enable me to keep volume at like 20% and still get the benefits of sound isolation. It's been a huge revolution for me personally.

Running for 2 hours used to give me an ear-ache. Now it's perfect. The improvement in comfort from music-at-the-office is even bigger. 8 hours was a lot and sound isolation is really important to me. I can't focus if I can hear other humans and eating noises make me wanna punch people.