Is the game really loud or

is it my soundcard? I turn ingame settings to about 25% and turn my computer speakers to about 10% volume and I can hear everything perfectly fine and still might turn it down a few decibels from time to time.

edit: kinda funny I've been playing for two years and am just making a thread about this lol

I had the same issue, until i realised that i had left "Loudness Equalisation" turned on in my settings, which is like a compressor.
To check right click your volume icon, hit playback devices. Right click the speakers or whichever playback device you are using and hit properties and look at the enhancements icon and make sure that loudness equalisation is turned off.
Thats my bet anyway

Yeah, wow. Turn that off.

There must be an issue with openal and the way windows does its loudness Eq processing, because that really messes up the sound.

That could easily be the problem ampdecay is describing.