Spatial layout maps

Not sure if this has been proposed, or is even already available in MuseScore, but I nearly always reassign new Pan values to instruments in scores that I download, or create. IMO this usually improves the audio considerably, and enables different strands of music to be heard more clearly.

While it doesn't take long to do, it does seem to me that this is something which could be improved. For example, in some standard orchestra layouts [yes - there are different ones] Violins 1 would normally be on the left, Violins 2 would be on the right, Trumpets would be at the back - half right, Horns would be at the back, half left and so on. Information about spatial layouts could be stored with each score, for use in the mixer.

At the current time depth information is probably not possible to represent, but left/right information is possible, to affect panning. Also, for some scores, a 360 degree layout might be helpful, for surround sound purposes, and even height information could be stored too. Rather than ignore depth and height information, this could be stored too, even if currently it would be ignored on playback. That would allow for future expansion and development, rather than creating a situation in which future modifications would require changes to the implementation.

So what I'm suggesting is that parameters describing each instruments location in space be stored, for use in the mixer. Another parameter might be something like "instrument width", to allow for "instruments", which are really groups of instruments, such as the cello section - which would be more diffusely defined than a single instrument - such as an oboe, which would probably have a rather precise location in space.

If such data could be recorded and used to drive the mixer, then it would be possible to have representations of different layouts ready to go. There might, for example, be a different layout for American, German, Russian and British orchestras. It would than take very little effort to relocate instruments spatially for each orchestral or band score.

Is anything like this currently available?