Ceiling – Ideas about sound coming from floor

Your options are limited being in an apartment, since you likely can't make very many permanent changes. I'll run through some ideas, though.

First, putting felt pads on the sides may help a little, but not for the reasons you think. They will do very little to dampen the vibrations -- you need mass or a dedicated damping agent for that. What the felt pads will help with is to reduce the mount of air flow through the door. Air flow is one of the absolute enemies of sound proofing. The more completely you can seal a door, the better it'll be. If you have the opportunity to attach an automatic door bottom (surface mount) and then some gaskets, then that'll go a long way towards quieting the noise.

Is your door hollow core? That is, does it sound hollow when you knock on it? If so, then you may look into replacing it with a solid core door. This can be done on a temporary basis as long as the hinges match up and you can simply pop out the old one and pop in the new one. A solid core door (especially a 1-3/4" thick one) will do a substantially better soundproofing job than a hollow core one. It does depend on you sealing it, though (see above) or else a lot of that benefit will disappear.

Beyond that... well, it really depends on how leeway you have towards making alternations to your apartment and how what your budget is. Attaching mass loaded vinyl to the walls and door would help, but would get pretty expensive very fast. Building an entirely separate interior wall would do a massive amount of help, but would absolutely cause noticeable marks when it was later removed. The flooring under the wall will certainly have to be re-done.

Listen, sound patterns travel in the weirdest ways. My house is on a hill and there is a college a block away. Every night my house was shaking from bass and I was like "what the hell". I am thinking the kids were cranking up their bass so I ventured out on a recon mission.

After a few nights of visiting the parking lot area I did realize it was a few kids. But their music was kind of loud but really not bad at all. The sound waves just climbed right up the hill and bam hit my house. I just asked them to move literally 30 feet over behind a tree and have never heard them since (and they still hang out there).

For your issue you have to get rid of all of your power for a night to make sure its not you. I believe you when you say its your neighbor but check yourself first. I did have a roommate in college that slept with semiloud music on all the time.

As for traveling through pipes... I doubt it. Unless their system is setup right next to the sewar lines or main stack really there is no way. Most bass back echos. So if they have a system that is facing away from your house in their room facing you, that would make more sense.

I would talk to the neighbor. Your options for making this sound go away on your own probably involve a tree or fence which I am not even sure is possible.