You may want to check that forum, but I will tell you what I have experienced lately. Most all of my house is now X10 and at almost the same time I installed my new home theater. The switch box/remote that you have is one of the most basic entry devices into X10. It works fine, but as you noted, it can be loud. Some of the direct wall outlet and lamp fixture X10 devices can be loud as you have seen. My lamp modules are very quiet where you can almost not hear them and my wall switches and in-line modules are completely silent. It is just a matter of cost and where you get the stuff.
In my home theater, I have overhead lights, sconces, rope lighting, a/v rack lights and a fridge all on X10. I can control them through my wall keypad in the room individually or through the use of macros. For me, I have buttons on my 6 button keypad that send signals to my home automation software (the keypad could do this itself) that in turn sends out commands and sequences to my X10 devices (housewide). The "movie" button turns off the overhead lights, rack lights and fridge (keeps it quiet during the movies) while dimming the sconces and rope lighting. The "football" mode turns off the overhead and rack lights, leaves the fridge on and dims the sconces and rope lights to a higher level than the "movie" setting.
I would be happy to answer questions for you directly from what I know if you do not want to spend the time searching forums.