b: a voltage divider would attenuate everything so the listener would end up raising the volume and the noise explosions would be unaffected. In my experience those noises are much louder than the music even at its louder peak, so a limiter would work better. A limiter is a circuit which let the audio signal unaffected up to a given level, then if necessary it starts limiting it to keep it to maximum that level. The limiter should be set up to trigger only with levels above the maximum original audio signal, so that although the noises wouldn't disappear, they would be confined to a lower level with the original signal left untouched.
