Control Room Cue Channels do not work with Ambisonics Main Mix

Working with a 3rd Order Ambisonics output channel as the Main Mix, everything in Control Room seems to work except for the Cue Channels.

When using Ambisonics as the Main Mix, I am able to set up stereo Monitors and stereo Headphones and use Downmix Presets to monitor the sound through one or multiple Monitors and Headphones. All of this works perfectly. However, Cues do not work: no sound gets routed to the Cue, whether through the Cue Sends in “Cue” mode or the Main Mix in “Mix” mode. Only the metronome gets routed to the Cue.

When the Main Mix output bus is Stereo, the Cue channels work perfectly (Cue Sends or Mix).

Am I missing some special setting somewhere or is this a bug?

Hmm, may have found a partial answer in the documentation.

  • Cue sends do not work for Ambisonics channels.

So neither a setting nor a bug, but a product limitation. Not quite sure why this can’t be done, when downmix already works perfectly well for monitors and headphones. And even if Cue Sends don’t work, why not the “Mix” function of the Cue?

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Yes, I also wondered about that when I read it.
As already written, I do not use Ambisonics. (Only Atmos.) But when you asked your question about the Ambisonic decoder the other day, I read up a bit on the subject. Thereby I stumbled over the sentence in the manual quoted by you.

This must have something to do with something deep in the bowels of Nuendo. Nuendo is already an old lady. Especially if a function has to be added later, it will probably not always be possible to integrate it seamlessly. (Or only with high effort.)
But the exact answer why it doesn’t work, only Steinberg can give you. :blush:

I’d love to ask Steinberg, but last time I went to them for Ambisonics help, they told me they don’t support it and sent me here.

I take it you don’t have these issues with Dolby Atmos?

For Cues, I might suspect latency as the reason, except that Nuendo is easily able to send HOA-to-stereo or -mono downmixes to Monitors and Headphones (also latency-sensitive), so what’s the difference? Even if the Cue Sends don’t work, I should at least be able to use Cues as additional Main Mix monitors.

Workaround here is probably to use a stereo Output as my ostensible “Main Mix”, use HOA as a secondary output bus for rendering (my true Main Mix), and then downmix to the stereo Main Mix for cueing and such. Or maybe some other intermediate stereo bus routing or something. Shouldn’t have to, but there it is.

Old lady sounds about right. I used Cubase briefly some 20+ years ago, when I had HALion and Wizoo libraries and such. Nuendo has some powerful new features but it still feels like the Cubase I used back then, as though built on top of a very old Cubase chassis, with a lot of legacy crud left in there. When Apple bought Logic from Emagic (I’ve used Logic since ), they pretty much gutted it and stripped out some popular functions — but over time they restored functionality (but designed better), and have continued to innovate: the result has been a very clean stable architecture, interface and experience. Reaper has its warts but its core also seems much more clean and modern.

Diving into Nuendo 12 with Ambisonics, despite Steinberg touting its Ambisonics abilities, I have hit weird snags and limitations all over the place, and I suspect you’re exactly right: much of it is due to the exceptions, duct tape and bubble gum holding it all together.

Yes, I have read that. If you remember, I responded that maybe Steinberg should pay us for this work. :rofl:

No, in conjunction with Atmos there is no problem with cue sends. But Atmos is routed quite differently in Nuendo.
I did a test and defined a track as a cue send. Now when I define an Ambisonics bus as “Main Mix”, the signal is no longer played back in the CR. Although the cue send(s) are still active.
As soon as I define the 7.1.4 bus as “Main Mix” again, the signal is played back by the CR. So it probably has something to do with the processing of the Ambisonics signal within the CR that it doesn’t work.
Cue sends are very limited in Nuendo anyway. A maximum of 4 are possible. But that is another topic. :wink:

Concerning the cue sends, you loose the ability to use the Cue send panner of mono channels, when you have anything higher than stereo as Master out.
Even when your channel is not routed to the master out at all.

If you happen to have a mono channel panned to the left in a cue mix in a “stereo Master Channel project”, it will be centered if you set the Master out to a 5.1 or 7.1.4 out. Although the Cue Panner might visually show different, it is also not moveable with the mouse anymore.

exactly my thoughts…

If I tried to express my thoughts of the way Cubase/Nuendo evolved, probably this would nail it.
Lot of unfinished, inconsistent things and not confidence building software behavior, combined with a gold standard attitude.
Sorry, did not want to put this thread in another direction with this rant, but your phrase really nailed it.

Cheers,
Dirx

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