PSA: My $20 white noise machine made my thin walls worse, not better

So I bought one of those tiny white noise machines from Amazon last month thinking it would drown out my neighbor's TV, but instead I just got really good at hearing their bass through the hum. It's like the machine filled in the quiet gaps and my brain started zeroing in on the low frequencies even harder, especially between 10pm and 2am. I tried moving it closer to the shared wall and cranking it to max, which just gave me a headache and tinnitus vibes for three nights. What actually worked was a box fan on the floor pointing away from the wall, plus a thick rug I wedged under the baseboard for like $14 at a thrift store in Denver. Anyone else had white noise backfire, or did I just pick a bad brand? If you've got a trick for bass-heavy neighbors, I'm all ears.