> You feel the sharp slamming of the doors, stairway exits and other household "noise" - as the tremors travel along the length and breadth of the structure - all the way in your living quarters.

For the love of Flying Spaghetti Monster so much this. So far as I can tell, my neighbors barely make an audible sound. But the continual slamming doors, closing drawers, heavy walking, rolling of chairs, clomping up and down the building stairs...all of it comes straight into my unit and reverberates like the lowest string of a bass guitar and sets me on edge.

I'm slowly getting used to it--mostly by telling myself that they can't hear what they're doing, they're not doing it intentionally, and I'm sure I make the same sounds--but it's super hard because it's very distracting to me.

I've been in numerous poorly built apartments and the only effective way I ever found to mask doors/cabinets slamming, footsteps etc. was with a portable hose AC unit. The compressor was loud and generated a nice masking low frequency tone making it harder to hear that nonsense. It took a week to adjust to the sound, but after that it was quite soothing. Of course this isn't actually solving anything, it's just driving up the noise floor for low frequency and contributing to making everything louder.

Unfortunately they're heavy, woefully inefficient, and quite expensive to run.

I later moved into a newly built "luxury" apartment where the neighbors garage was directly under my bedroom. I figured as long as I got a decent neighbor it wouldn't be too bad. Struck out and got someone underemployed driving a 2 fast 2 furious civic with custom exhaust. Shook the entire building every night between 12 and 4 AM. No way to mask that. Lesson learned.

Top floor always, corner if you can, never directly above or next to a garage. Only exception is if the building is made out of concrete, which is exceptionally rare and will cost more. More expensive place the better -- you have a (slightly) higher chance of getting next to working professionals and quiet families.

I use this free software application on my phone at night: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mcxa.softsound/ F-Droid also has another app called Noice which is more modern and has more features&sounds, but I prefer the sound samples in this one.

I just put the phone in the charger in my bedroom and turn up the volume a bit, though I am considering getting speakers since the rain sound doesn't sound 100% perfect through the phone speakers.

I use a mix of storm@100%, rain @90%, and wind+fire at 70-80%.

I don't have an issue with loud neighbours, but it helps to fall asleep and makes a daily routine which also helps with falling asleep fast.

I grew up sleeping with a humidifier first in my room and then just some kind of noisy fan. Nowadays I use a Marpac sound machine, like you see in doctors offices sometimes. Kind of a quirky habit but silence feels so... deafening.

I use an air filter for white noise. I breath better too.

You should throw away the earplugs every few days. Or, you could use soft silicone putty earplugs, and sterilize them during the day.

Check out the ambience apps. It's doing this, but very customizable!

"But the sound of my own heart beat is annoying" I just realized how ridiculous that sounds. I am moaning that I am alive!

That's not a general-purpose argument against earplugs, as some people have noise problems in the frequency that they do block out (this was the case for me)

what about bose sleepbuds?