I decided to give it a test run before going to bed. From about 3 minutes into the skirmish, I can barely hear any sounds! Unit sounds work fine, the music's okay, but there's hardly any boom boom bang bang from my rockets or whatever guns my units are firing! Anyone know what the problem is?

I have the same thing and the only solution i found was to raise the fx sounds to the maximum and lower everything else.
Also, sometimes it seems like when there's speech going on, some of the fx sounds get cutt off almost entirely. It's not always but it does happen...
But if you have ffdshow you can try to add the game executable to the exceptions list as that seems to solve some audio/video issues.
There's also the setup tool, but i've only used it to set the resolution and i'm not sure if there are any audio options in there.

Turning down all other volume settings helps, but I'm still very underwhelmed by the sound effects. Even when zoomed in, the sound effects lack the kick. I think this is where the game really falls short.
Still if anyone else has any other solutions or ideas, I'm open to hearing them

I realised that for the most part, the amount of sound reduced when you scroll out is a LOT in proportion. This means the battlefield is very much quiet when you zoom all the way out. Is there a patch or mod that fixes this?

I guess there's no fix then? We have to live with crappy sound effects?

Have you tried going to the settings (via shortcut in the start menu) and changing the sound to automatically detected?
Also, make sure Windows is configured to use the correct number of speakers sometimes if you're using Vista or Windows 7 it defaults to a surround sound setup regardless of the number of speakers you actually have.

“I have to shoot something today, I haven’t eaten since last week” Jag said as he gathered his bow and arrows he had made from a pine tree he cut down. He did have a 20 gauge shotgun but no ammo and it was the only thing he had recovered from the fire, (besides some clothes and a blanket). He had not found any shells so the gun proved worthless.
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Free Sound Effects

I know this topic is old, but im currently having the same issue as well like the original poster were some of the sounds (e.g. guns firing, and unit sounds when moving, etc.) are still really low despite turning up the volume. Was anyone able to solve this issue at all or is it unfixable?