Do quieter sounds travel at the same speed but for less distance?
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Sound travels at a certain speed because that’s how fast air molecules bump into each other to keep the chain reaction going. Imagine air molecules are a bunch of beach balls floating around in a large room. Then suddenly move one of the walls of the room inwards. The wall will smack into a bunch of the beach balls, and those balls will smack into more balls, etc. You’ll see a “wave” propagate through the beach balls. The speed of that wave is the speed of sound.
In fact, sound travels at a lot of different speeds. It travels at a slightly different speed when you get higher in altitude (because air pressure decreases), and it travels at a slightly different speed when the weather is hot vs when it’s cold, or humid vs dry. The “official” speed of sound is just the speed at sea level at a certain temperature and humidity, but otherwise the speed varies with changes in temperature, pressure, humidity, and other variables.
Also, sound travels different speeds in different mediums. For instance, it travels waaaay faster in water than in air, and even faster through solid objects.
The volume of a sound has nothing to do with it’s speed. Volume is more about how large of a change in air pressure is created by the sound. If it creates a bigger change in air pressure, it’s louder. But otherwise, the sound propagates at the same speed.
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