This leads to interesting things like for many a white noise source (actually pink noise) nicely blots out most other auditory stimuli by helping direct attention away. Yet the noise source itself heightens sensitivity (why some people find ANC annoying).
Finally some people simply can not direct their attention strongly and it's worsening.
Hypersensitivity it's being swallowed up as an autism trait but many people simply aren't as trained at directing attention than we were in the past since we have such loud hobbies.
Mindfulness does wonders here.
When PulseAudio added "absolute volume control" support, I found out it would sometimes fake in extra clicks in which the actual volume would NOT change, but gave the impression of granularity. Wonders of HDA & usb audio...
On my old QC-35 I couldn't hear it, but it's pretty noticeable on the QC-45 I got after those broke.
(Likewise many people say they can't hear the noise ANC headphones produce - it seems likely to me that they're either in a too loud environment so it's masked at all times, have hearing damage or both. It'd be interesting to see the Venn diagram with people who complain you can't turn up phone headphones to be loud enough any more - mumble mumble the EU took it from us! Meanwhile the volume step size of AirPods is too coarse for me because I'm only ever using the lowest four or so "clicks", rarely exceeding 50 dB per HealthKit).