The question with whether an object could travel faster than sound was what would happen to air particles if that occurred: Could air move faster than it moves due to sound waves? The answer is that air gets spatially compressed, causing a sonic boom. It was not clear whether than spatial compression would destroy the craft doing the compression; as it turns out the compression happens in advance of the object.
A "photonic boom" would certainly be a concern if it were possible to travel than light. But the problem with surpassing the speed of light is one of relativity, not mechanics; since time of the stationary objects travels faster and faster relative to you, as your speed asymptotically approaches light speed, the time elapsed from the observer's reference point approaches infinity.
One big difference is that we knew some objects could go faster than sound, such as bullets. We just didn't know if a controllable and powerful enough airplane could do it.
AFAIK no one has measured or observed an object that has mass going faster than light.