I've seen mods such as this one that change the volume + range of stereos in the world. It got me thinking a while back if it was possible to get stereos to behave even more similar to previous Sims games where the music would project with multi-channel audio. For example you'd hear differences in the left and right channels of the music like the artists intended. Sims 4 changed this so that all music from stereos is played in a mono format that pans as you move the camera around.

I was cautiously hoping that this would be something that could be changed within the game's tuning via Sims 4 Studio but so far I have had no luck. Most files seem to only show settings to adjust things like the audio gain and distance settings as seen below:


Curiously, though, there do seem to be audio plugins referring to something called "pan2d" which suggests there theoretically IS a way to adjust how the audio panning/mixing works, however none of the Voice Effect files for stereos (or any objects) make use of the plugin as far as I am able to explore with S4S. So even if I were to try to insert the plugin into a stereo's tuning I have no idea what the parameters would be for me to configure.


Here's an example of Voice Plugins being used with actual parameters for me to go off of:


This seems to be unexplored territory for the game as Google brings up no results for any of this. I've even gone as far as browsing through the Python scripts to see if it's something that's being configured there but no luck. I've also looked through Maxis' tuning descriptions that they provided in 2014 but nothing there either.

I am pretty novice when it comes to modding but have been successful in making small ones in the past on my own. Adjusting censor grid sizes, lot population settings, mesh replacements with Blender, etc... So once I understand the basic foundation of something I'm usually able to get myself moving from there. But the problem is there doesn't seem to be much of a foundation at all here for how the game handles more technical audio properties. If anyone has any insight in to this mystery, no matter how small, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts. I guess worst-case scenario is that this is something outside of modders' reach and is handled by some sort of audio middleware for the game.