Sony's headphones are among the best on the market, delivering exceptional sound, noise cancellation, and software features before entering the high-end headphone segment. What I appreciate most about Sony is that its products offer considerable customization, allowing you ample opportunities to tweak the headphones to your liking down to a granular level.

Also: Sony WH-1000XM6 vs. Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2: How I'd justify spending $300 more for headphones

However, if you don't know what you're looking for, Sony's feature list can feel like a foreign language. Here are the tips and tricks I've found over the years that make the $400+ even more worth it.

If you want to listen to your WH-1000XM6 via a wired connection, ensure your headphones are powered on before playing any music. This may sound like a no-brainer, but it's so obvious that it's easy to forget. Leaving the headphones off means their digital signal processing is inactive, which enhances sound quality, fullness, and vibrancy.

You can listen to the XM6 via wire with the headphones off, but you'll get a tinny, distant, blurred sound profile. I only recommend listening over wired -- and with your headphones powered off -- if they're low on or out of battery.

Both iPhones and Android phones support the AAC Bluetooth codec, but Apple has optimized it for its phones, while Android's implementation and encoding are more fragmented and unreliable. All phones also support Bluetooth's default SBC codec on Classic Bluetooth radio, but it's associated with high latency, poor audio quality, and weak connection.