Sometimes I’d wear earbuds underneath the earmuffs. Other times I’d just prefer as close to silence as possible.
I tried noise canceling headphones and couldn’t tell if they really helped. This was a while ago, like 2009, but I bought some decently high end Sony and I felt like they made my ears ring later on. It seemed better to wear earmuffs vs. some special high tech method. Plus one thing I was mitigating was the meows of a huge cat I had who meowed REALLY loudly, and that’s the sort of thing noise canceling doesn’t reduce.