There is rarely a time where I see strand not mostly full, this being anywhere from 2PM to late at night eastern US time.
The bandage sounds are downloaded through every server and are completely separate from downloading the map itself.
(It is possible that the loading display is still showing the player to be downloading all that bandage mumbo jumbo, but in actuality it hasn't updated 100% yet and is downloading the map itself, thus making the player believe that they are stuck on DLing the bandage sounds or whatever)
if one is DLing a map from a server they can usually expect to wait a bit regardless of their internet connection speed. I've always recommended to people that they download it separately.