You need to re-read this:
ASIO has no role in the VST rendering of Atmos. Your ASIO driver will playback whatever audio is sent to it from Nuendo if you have it set properly. Your ASIO driver/device has no clue if your audio was in Atmos format, it just sees the 12 (7.1.4) audio channels sent out by Nuendo and routes them to your device outputs, like any others.
ASIO has no role in the VST rendering of Atmos. Your ASIO driver will playback whatever audio is sent to it from Nuendo if you have it set properly. Your ASIO driver/device has no clue if your audio was in Atmos format , it just sees the 12 (7.1.4) audio channels sent out by Nuendo and routes them to your device outputs, like any others.
We said the same thing in 2 different ways.
The renderer… renders. ASIO delivers the audio to the speakers. However, without ASIO no one is doing anything with… anything.
My ultimate point with ASIO was that Dolby needs it on Windows. The only even potential alternative would be WASPI but I don’t even consider that an alternative tbh. No one does.
So, we are full circle back to Steinberg wanting to keep everyone in Nuendo where they control ASIO. My hopes are that Dolby engineers are working on their own compatible ASIO driver.
And again, I want to stress this which no one is picking up on. ASIO is capable of being ran unlocked and in use on multiple applications and devices at the same time. Over 128 channels. But Steinberg does not provide this functionality on any of their drivers. I really wish people would get up in arms over this, they won’t change anything while everyone sits back and takes what they leave on the table for us.
ASIO does not deliver the audio to speakers. ASIO is the bridge between your audio application (Nuendo in this case) and your sound card. Sound card then outputs your audio to monitors.
I have tried to understand this thread but failed. 
You do your audio work in Nuendo. You setup it correctly for ATMOS. When finished, you export your ATMOS mix from Nuendo using included ATMOS renderer.
It is Nuendo that uses ASIO to communicate with your sound card, not renderer…
Sir, you are not… wrong. 
So ultimately, Atmos Renderer in Nuendo is not available for PC Windows. Dolby’s own external renderer isn’t either.
Sums it all up.
“This is why we can’t have nice things…”
Seems to be a lot of confusion around the Dolby Renderer, which is understandable since Dolby doesn’t make it that clear. It is a rabbit hole I went down and yelled at Dolby about so I’ll see if I can help clear things up a bit:
The Dolby Renderer itself is the component that sets up the object and bed mix. Dolby sells it in a couple products: The Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite and the Dolby Atmos Production Suite and also licenses it to be included in DAWs like Nuendo. The renderer comes from Dolby in all cases, there’s a reason it looks the same, they are controlling about it. However how it works and what it can do varies based on the version.
The version included in DAWs can only work with the specified DAW, routing things internally. So you can use it in the DAW to create Atmos mixes but not cross program. It’s output formats are limited to home/studio channel based formats as far as I know currently maxing out at 7.1.4.
The Dolby Atmos Production Suite is a Mac-only program package that has a stand-alone Dolby Renderer that you can connect a DAW on the same PC to using Core Audio and OSC or send/receive plugins. So any DAW that knows how to talk to it can do so, but only ones running on that system. It also has some additional features including the ability to open up ADM files itself and play them, and encode them to E-AC3. It also supports up to 9.1.6 speakers.
The Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite is the “full” version of the renderer and was initially the only thing available (used to be called Home Theater Renderer) and was Windows only though is Mac as well now. It is an external only solution, it runs on a dedicated computer (originally had to be a certain kind of Dell server) and your DAW sends it audio via MADI or Dante and control via OSC. Despite the fact that this could be an “open” solution, Dolby only seems to offically support Pro Tools but the panner plugin you need will work on PT, Nuendo, Logic and Live on Mac only.
This version gets you everything the DAPS does (and comes with a few licenses of it) but also gets you one small-ish and one big thing. The smaller one is the ability to do speaker eq/calibration. So you can handle all that in-box, you don’t need to have a separate device to handle it or speakers that do it themselves. The big one is you can now use speaker arrays, like theaters do. So you can have 50 or even 100 speakers laid out around the room and it’ll make use of all of them. Hence why it really needs its own computer to process on.
As for encoding to E-AC3 (MP4) or AC-4 while the standalone DAPS can do that, it isn’t really part of the renderer per-se though it includes that functionality. Dolby intends that something like that is for making files to check your mix on consumer gear. For actual encoding for distribution, Dolby would like that you should license on a yearly basis the Dolby Encoding Engine or Dolby Media Encoder which is the sort of thing that Netflix uses to encode master files in to deliverables. The Encoding Engine runs on Windows/Mac/Linux and is made to be integrated with batch processing and such for streaming services like Amazon and Netflix. The Media Encoder is a GUI application and is, you guessed it, Mac only.
So where does that leave us Windows Nuendo users? SOL basically. Dolby seems to kiss Apple and Avid’s butt, like most of the cinema industry. They at least support more than just Pro Tools (DTS: X is PT only) but they are very Mac centric. While their technology runs fine on Windows, we can see that from the renderer in Nuendo, they don’t have the same stand-alone support for it.
In terms of encoding right now there’s three solutions, none of them great:
None of these make me happy. For the future there are two possibilities:
So what I think we Windows-Nuendo users should do is pester Steinberg to look at adding encoding support. I imagine this would be something they’d have to charge us for as an addon, as things like MP3 encoding once were, and I’m 100% ok with that. I’d happily pay $100 extra for E-AC3 encoding to be able to do everything in Nuendo, rather than any of the other suboptimal solutions.
But that is where we stand today. Confusion, overly complicated, and kissing the butt of Apple/Avid.
Hope this helps clear up confusion, not create more.
Hi Sycraft,
pretty good write-up. Thx for it.
I think, that there are a couple of other aspects playing into it.
One is, that Dolby seems to care more about professionals in companies (studios with $$$) rather than hobbyists or ambitioned amateurs with some $$ only. This is related to making much money (sell many licenses to pros) with little work load (less support required for individuals).
Another one is, that professionals produce material, that goes into cinemas, high quality streaming services or into BluRay products and so get it to be known by many people. The effect from this is, that the consumer crowd buys systems (smart phone, streaming sticks, AVR etc) that feature Dolby Atmos. This in turn brings back licensee money to Dolby.
And also, I think there are only a few freaks in this world, who have a “true” Dolby Atmos … or in general … a true Immersive Audio speaker setup at home.
The majority of people is using Atmos capable sound bars or Atmos featured smart phones with headsets to listen to Dolby Atmos content. At least, they believe they are listening to Dolby Atmos and it being immersive audio. I guess most would still believe in listening to Atmos eventhough some material comes only with some reverb added onto a Stereo signal … just my opinion.
The largest part of the market is people with smart phones and headsets. Adding some kind of Dolby Atmos Enablement to smart phones is what Dolby Atmos is going for, This is, what they will make most money from by licensing the Dolby Atmos feature.
Is a bit like THX quite some years ago. When I saw this logo on a pair of $20 PC-Speakers, my opinion was made up.
My overall take is, that Binaural Audio is the way to deliver immersive audio to the majority of end users. It does not matter, whether the content is coming from Dolby Atmos or any other vendor out there.
But Binaural carries a whole lot of other unknowns. It goes to the point that “every head is a bit different”, physically and also the undefined stuff between the two ears 
Technically, all around HRTF is addressing this.
Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision in cinemas will keep having its market share. Home cinemas with pseudo-Atmos may even grow. But home cinemas with true Atmos speaker equipment will stay flat or even decline.
… just my two cents.
LG, Juergi
Exactly. Everybody keeps making such a big friggin deal about Dolby Atmos, but 98% are still listening through stereo (other than cinema).
What I/O device do you use?