I really dislike the alarms and alert sounds (their loudness as the main issue), and find it a little odd that only one or two people have ever been annoyed by them and seem to have ever commented on it, including myself. I don’t want them removed, just lowered in volume and a slider that lets me, the individual player, choose how frequently I want to hear them. Doesn’t sound like a big ask, but I’ve been trying to get this for years now.
I got tired of waiting with AoE2:HD and ended up modding the battle horn sounds there (and some others, like a particular monk sound) to be lower volume. This made the game much more enjoyable! Now, I’m stuck with loud battle alarm sounds of DE.
Honestly, some of the audio decisions in DE may be enough to sway me to choose HD over DE more often. (Doorbell chat alert sounds, symphonic/orchestral soundtrack choice only, loud battle alert sounds, etc. Sometimes I just want the digital clarity and punch of the old keyboard synth soundtrack instead of the new cinematic, airy symphony, you know?) One friend already jumped ship and went back to HD due to lots of changes made in DE (wall/tower nerfs, colors/fire/explosion revisions, audio, etc.)
The plethora of poor audio decisions in AoE3 is a huge reason why I have no desire to play that game ever again.
The flare sound in DE annoys me, as well. I used to love their subtle whoosh sound in AoE2:HD, iirc… but DE made it obnoxiously loud and intrusive. I cringe and roll my eyes every time a flare is used in DE. And if too many happen, I have to stop what I’m doing to lower the entire game’s volume
If you ever mod the alert volume levels to be lower in AoE2:DE, I will gladly use it. Loud enough to notice them, yet blended in enough to not be nearly as annoying. And I’ll still hold out hope that official devs will make a ‘frequency of occurrence’ slider for the battle alerts