I think, it is more logical to mix instruments than tracks.
The problem of mixing tracks is, that you have to work very clean - means one instrument uses every time a special track only. But at the end, you want to mix an instrument and not parts of an instrument, see studio software like Cubase.
The coding is much harder, when it works as it works at the moment.
Either you can assign an instrument directly to a track, which can’t be used by another instrument or you always have to work very clean, even though it is not necessary, cause an instrument mix is enough.
I agree.
I think that routing via instruments/samples would be better than routing via tracks (like now). At least in most occasions.
I was actually about to make a thread about this. Changing this could be pretty radical tho, for backwards compatibility and such… Personally I wouldn’t mind, but some others might. Maybe an option in the prefs could solve this, where you’d select between the “track routing (old Renoise mode)” or “instrument routing”.
I also proposed some kind of a compromise with routing options, so that you’d have some benefits of routing via instruments/samples in the current Renoise routing system.