It's actually patched by Joe82 who had also done ALC293, ALC236, ALC668 and currently ALC298 for me. Patched AppleHDA is known to not get very loud, but I'm not sure if there's way to amplify it. You could try using Boom 2.
As for no sound after sleep, try the latest CodecCommander. Hervé has an E6440 that also uses ALC292 and has no issue with the latest CodecCommander without the need of EAPDFix.
I haven't try that on the E7440, so I can't confirm. The 2 kexts from my bootpack had always worked for me.