Welcome Brett,
The stock TP ROM - - Is SLOW and Burdened with Carrier specific JUNK!!!!!
My advice is to do one thing at a time, this way of something happens you can always backtrack to where your phone was last working well.
The first thing you should do is upgrade your ROM to one of the many that can be found by the fabulous cookers on this site. Juicy, Phantom, Mighty, and many others make very good ROMS for the Touch Pro.
Start here:
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=68
read through the Sticky Posts at the top and you will find instructions on unlocking your phone to ready it for flashing the ROM, then instructions on flashing.
To Unlock you phone look here;
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=42503
Directly below the Sticky Posts you will find numerous ROMS available to try. Read through the ROM's contents and see which one works best for you.
To make your speaker louder you need to change a file called Audiopara.csv. This file is probably cooked into some of the newer ROMS, and if it is not you can find it in numerous posts on this site like this one;
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=41385
If the search function is not working so great for you google does a good job. Search "ppcgeeks audiopara.csv"
I come back here almost everyday to see what this community has brought to the table.