The purpose of the paper is to identify Mach-number effects on pressure fluctuations $p'$ in compressible turbulent plane channel flow. We use data from a specifically constructed $(Re_{\tau ^\star },\bar {M}_{{CL}_x})$-matrix direct numerical simulation (DNS) database, with systematic variation of the centreline streamwise Mach number $0.32\leqslant \bar {M}_{{CL}_x}\leqslant 2.49$ and of the HCB (Huang et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 305, 1995, pp. 185–218) friction Reynolds number $66\leqslant Re_{\tau ^\star }\lessapprox 1000$. Strong $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}$ effects (enhanced by the increasingly cold-wall condition) appear for $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}\gtrapprox 2$, for all $Re_{\tau ^\star }$, very close to the wall ($y^\star \lessapprox 15$). Compared with incompressible flow at the same $Re_{\tau ^\star }$, the wall root-mean-square $[p'_{rms}]^+_w$ (in wall-units, i.e. scaled by the average wall shear stress $\bar {\tau }_w$) strongly increases with $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}$. In contrast, the peak level across the channel, $[p'_{rms}]^+_{PEAK}$, slightly decreases with increasing $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}$. In order to study the near-wall coherent structures we introduce a new wall-distance-independent non-local system of units, based for all $y$ on wall friction and the extreme values of density and dynamic viscosity, namely, for cold walls $\{\bar {\tau }_w,\min _y\bar {\rho },\max _y\bar {\mu }\}$. The average spanwise distance between streaks, scaled by this length-unit, is nearly independent of $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}$ at constant $Re_{\tau ^\star }$. Using the in-plane (parallel to the wall) Laplacian $\nabla ^2_{xz}p'$ we find that the $(+/-)\text {-}p'$ wave-packet-like structures appearing inside the low-speed streaks ($y^\star \lessapprox 15$) with increasing $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}\gtrapprox 2$ are part of a more complex wave system with spanwise extent over several streaks, whose spatial density decreases rapidly with decreasing $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}$ or increasing $y^\star$. These $p'$ wave packets appear to be collocated with strong $(+/-)$-$v'$ events and could be responsible for compensating towards 0 the negative incompressible-flow correlation coefficient $c_{p'v'}$, with increasing $\bar {M}_{{CL}_x}$ very near the wall.