For films, you have idiots like Christopher Nolan who's head is so far up his own ass he can probably see daylight. He purposefully mixes the audio poorly so nobody can hear anything, and likes it that way because .... something something something immersion artsy bullshit. I couldn't even finish watching Tenet, we turned it off halfway through because we had zero clue what was going on, and I will refuse to ever watch another Nolan film after that.

For games, I think it's just poor mixing, I doubt they mean to do it on purpose. They just don't invest in the proper audio people.

Part of it is they are mixed in professional environments (studios) for professional environments (cinema).

Part of it is they can't mix for someone with a 10 year old tv using its built in speakers in a shared living room with street noise, 15 feet from the sofa and a brand new TV through a sound bar in a rural mansion 8 feet from the sofa, and someone using airpods over Bluetooth.

Plus people tend to listen to things at a volume similar to conversational level, but in a cinema you listen to things at a volume that would be considered impolite to your neighbors if you did it in an apartment block.

Finally, sound engineers are artists and dynamics (louder and quieter parts) are part of their craft. Actors are artists and their vocal performances also have dynamics.

A question to ask yourself is have you considered more actively participating in the sound delivery methods of your media? I'm not here to say "all people are watching TV wrong!" but I would ask if most people have even thought carefully about their sound delivery choices, their own EQ settings in their TV, how well tuned their environment is for active listening, and if they just need to turn their volume up?

I appreciate not everyone can blaze the sound on max — but if you do have to sacrifice some volume, maybe part of that tradeoff is clarity of dialogue?

It seems tv audio engineers expect everyone to have a high end theater speaker setup: that's the only way to be able to hear it, apart from to use headphones, which is cheaper, but it's not a great solution. You'd think apps like netflix and Disney plus would be able to include a setting like video games that selects a different audio mix, or separate tracks for dialogue and sfx each with thier own volume slider.

because it's never re-mixed for home release. it's the OG mix for theathers.

re-mixing it would cost too much money and too few people give a fuck about proper sound.

Funnily enough, watching TV in bed is the other reason I started watching with subs! I've since switched to bluetooth headphones for that and I find I don't usually need subtitles if I'm using them.

I know Windows has a compressor of sorts built in, the audio equalization feature, and I wish there were a good equivalent for this on Linux.

Install easyeffects if it's not installed by default. You can have all kinds of audio processing for both output and input