And thus my subtitle requirement was born

I hate it.

Windows has a great feature called Loudness Equalization, which you can enable on about every sound device in the properties.

It lowers the volume on loud sounds and increases on soft sounds.

Hell yeah PREACH brotha!
My partner and I use it for watching ANYTHING. Turn it off for music and games, and on for any possible watching thing. It’s MAGIC.
- I’ll take it a step further and recommend K-Lite Codec Pack, it lets you set up MPC-HC with that and the option to enable center boost for 5.1 audio on 2.0 setups

Secret i learned on my raspberry pi running stereo speakers on Kodi is you can set a seperate volume for the dialogue channel so i just bumped it up like 14 decibels and now it matches the action fairly well. You can set it from the audio settings inside the movie and its called something like center channel downmix i cant remember exactly
- Center channel downmix boost or something is the name. Iirc the phenomenon with quiet dialogue is due to most streaming content being delivered with surround audio. The shitty cheap video players used by the streaming services will do a cheap flat downmix to stereo which results in the center channel being too low when split into two mono channels for playback on stereo speakers compared to if it would be played on a dedicated center speaker. This is due to maths or something.
  Back in the day dvd and even vhs movies had proper stereo mixes where the center channel would be boosted to audible levels.
  Tl;dr: just pirate shit and use a proper video player instead of the cheapass players used by netflix, disney, etc.

This should be illegal. I'm so tired of having to turn the TV up to hear the dialogue and then all the sudden the loudest noise you ever heard in your life. Then you turn it down .. But here's the next dialogue where you have to turn it back up again.

It really ruins the experience for me personally

Ok it can't just be me. It feels like at a certain point sound levels got messed up. When I watch older stuff it's fine the new stuff I feel like I am skipping backwards to catch what they said.

This has driven me crazy for a long time too. It really feels like this picture and takes something away from any enjoyment.
It isn't just you. Vox has a good video on it.
- What an obnoxious conclusion they have - we need to buy better speakers. I have good speakers. Old things sound great, but new shows sound like crap. This is their problem to fix, not ours.

This is why I turn on the audio normalization on my TV. It makes the explosions sound super weird but it's impossible to watch movies with kids sleeping otherwise. The mixing is so bad.

The mixing isn't for your home. Which it obviously should be.
- Watching TV is also shit. When an ad break comes, I have to mute the sound or turn down the volume, regardless of normalization. That should be illegal in my opinion but it's the status quo.

That's why subtitles became so popular in the recent times

no , it's just that almost all streaming services think you have dolby atmos surround sound

Atmos won't save you from shitty sound mixes, I have a pretty nice speaker setup and still have to turn on captions if I want to hear a conversation without my neighbors calling the cops during the next action sequence.
I have it, still need subtitles because mumbling is cool yo
- Classic schooled actors with theater experience are being replaced by young actors using basic conversational speech and volume. More natural but not that easy to understand.
I do.
I still have subs on.

I personally like high dynamic range. Most receivers, and I'm guessing most smart TVs, have some form of dynamic range compression if you don't. Bad quality, "realistic" voice recordings are a different issue. Having a center channel speaker also helps a lot.

Most TVs seem to default to playing the surround audio track, which is a terrible idea when you only have stereo speakers, but I guess the TVs do it in case you decide to hook up a multi speaker system mid movie?? Choosing the down mixed stereo audio instead, makes for a much better experience for most people.
Center channel speaker FTW

I am on a gnu+linux (it's an operating system like windows or iOS) and I use the pulseeffects app it has all sorts of soundeffects that you can use on your audio.

I just use the compressor to even out the volume throughout. Especially useful on youtube.

ok rms

Someone in my family calls this "whispering explosions" which I'm pretty sure comes from something, not sure what

There are ways around that, for example I watch my Plex server on an Apple TV and there is an option that will reduce loud sounds so I can hear dialogue without being blasted away at other parts

Same. I can't watch English movies on a TV because I just don't understand it... But then with headphones on everything is perfect.

That's why I love Star Trek. I never have trouble understanding dialogue.

shibas are crazy tho

I have tinnitus and I have a hard time hearing low volume audio .... so yes subtitles are a requirement now.

The funny part to that is if I decide to watch some dumb action flick ... I set the sound for the explosions and I really don't care if I can hear the dialogue because I know it will be stupid

If you make a movie you make it with multiple audio tracks (lines), often there are dozens of lines for cinemas and more for IMAX. If you mix all those lines together, e.g. to 5.1 for home cinema you'll lose dynamic range. Now if you mix it into 2 lines (stereo) this means you basically have everything (explosion, whispers) on the same two lines for left and right and that's why you either need at least a front speaker for dialogue (so only effects are muddy but voices are clear) or bear with it.

Or studios could go back to properly mixing their audio when making versions for home setups
- They do for 5.1, which is a pretty common home setup, even 3.0 or 3.1 works quite okay with it. How many people do actually watch movies with a stereo setup nowadays?

Subtitles ruin native-language movies. I'll enable them if I'm watching something in public because I'm not a monster but otherwise I hate them.

Get some decent speakers, FFS. A 'sound bar' does not qualify. A good center channel speaker is essential. Don't even need the rear surrounds with a good front setup.

I doubt most people even have a soundbar...
Try dubbing for ruining native-language movies.
- Agree in many cases. I wouldn't watch a dub of Seven Samurai for instance. But Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? A dub is fine there IMO.
Subtitles ruin native-language movies.
Why is that?
- You end up reading and not watching the movie. Focus is split between the two instead of just enjoying the experience.