Because they insist on mixing the audio in a shitty way so unless you want to fiddle with the audio-level every 5 seconds or have your eardrums shattered by action/suspense-scenes, you can't hear dialogue and need subs to understand what the fuck is going on...

Edit: and before people start saying "5.1 in stereo is the cause!1!!1!1", no forcing stereo does absolutely nothing to alleviate this.

We use subtitles because the sound mixing is fucking terrible in most media now. It's set up for massive theatres where dialogue sounds normal and gunfire or explosions sounds realistically loud. But I'm not trying to have realistically loud explosions in my living room on my Vizio, so the volume is set accordingly, meaning you can't make out words half the time.

For fucks sake, can we just get releases that have separate audio tracks for dialogue, music, and effects that we the viewer can decide how we want to hear it?

Video games figured this out

I don't want the explosions to be so loud that it wakes my entire house.

I'm hard of hearing and Hollywood insists on making dialogue bearly audible, so I need to use subtitles to understand wtf the character just mumbled.

Also, she doesn't suck at eating popcorn, that's the suprise popcorn you find after you've demolished the rest of the popcorn.

I for one love having to turn it right up to hear the actors mumble important plot points at eachother right before gunshots or jarring violin stingers damage my speakers/ear drums/wake my kids up.

Dunno why you're pussying around with subtitles lol.

The sound is often so fucked up. Music, explosions, guns, cars etc are so fucking loud, but conversations are very dim, as if people are almost whispering. It's often very hard to hear what people are saying, especially when eating crisps.

I always use English subs, even when watching stuff in my own language (Dutch)

Also a lot of people forget that English is the international language, and most of the non-native speaker can't really hear the pronunciation correctly. Well, i don't at least.

Audio levels are mixed horribly and go crazy loud with music but i cant fucking hear anyone talking. It feels like around 2010 or something tv shows and movies were like "lets just forget about voices and let everyone hear explosions and shitty driving music".

Its not my ears because YouTube folks who can mix their audio properly are easy to hear. Anime is mixed well usually with voices.

Its the studios doing this for whatever reason unknown to us.

I use subtitles 100% of the time now.

I turn on subtitles to subtley force my kid to read. He's got ADHD like me, but mine made me read at a super early age, while he struggles with it. To me, it's a way to expose him to words and the spelling as they come. My dad struggled with reading as well and basically just memorized most words and their pronunciation instead of actually learning to read. If that helps the kiddo, then I don't mind it, but I secretly turn it off by myself, and turn it back on when I'm done.

How bizarre. I detest subtitles for myself as I end up reading rather than watching the content - compulsively.

I've never had an issue hearing dialogue so I'm perplexed as to what audio setups are being used to make things so lousy for so many people.

As a millennial that had Gen X and boomer relatives... So do they, especially as they got older.

Yeh you can watch at lower volume with subtitles because even if you don't conciously look at them it still helps your brain interpret the sounds and make up for anything you miss due to the reduced volume.

I mean, she does suck but isn't that the norm?

I can't eat popcorn anywhere without needing to hoover up around me afterwards, and I ain't untidy by any means!

I have hearing loss, and from this thread I gather most of you have it too lol. Yeah, probably sound mixing is bad, but do yourself a favor and get checked. Your life quality can really improve if you treat this condition.

I enjoy reading. I also prefer text to phone call. I enjoy subtitles.