it is my opinion that the new sounds are bad, yes. sorry you don't agree; you don't have to download the mod. i believe that they are tinny and cut off awkwardly. i love that they added sounds for distance, though. this was something i reaaally wanted.
the next version will simply take what the devs have done with the effects and expand them. the smoke will last longer, as before. they also added a pan flash/smoke effect that i will modify because right now it doesn't look particularly realistic. the bullet hits will only be modified slightly for realism -- i don't think the new effects are bad, and, as i mentioned, they seem very similar to mine aside from the lifetime of the particles being set much lower.