OK thanks for clarifying. You have managed to double up on your sends and direct outs from the one audio track (not a group). The problem is imagine there were at least 16 of these audio tracks, and that’s just for music. We would quickly fill up the objects and with a lot of wasted bandwidth.
Also, you are showing a case just for the top 4. The insert is muting the first 8. What about about them?
As I said I am not from music but in my last film project I had almost 1600 tracks and still could not saturate all the objects. Agreed I was not working with 7.1.4 wav’s, but nothing stops you to split the overheads into mono.
so that would be 4x16=64 you will still have plenty.
I think Nuendo is using Dolbys own internal Bridge for Atmos routing. I may be wrong here but it does appears probable as you can switch on the fly from objects to beds, if so then the ball is in Dolbys court.
Maybe I’m missing the obvious - but why wouldn’t you just crossfade the 7.1.4 WAV itself, then …?
I’ve got it working! Rajiv’s use of pre and post inserts and sends gave me an idea. Here’s what I did:
I have tested with a mono sine wave and panned it around and it all works as it should. Doing this test did show up Steinbergs incorrect surround side and rear order. However that will be another thread.
PS thanks for the suggestion Dietz but thats not neccessary now as I can send all to the 7.1.4 group.
I started out importing the .4 wav files as four objects to represent the .4 master. Yes, it sounded GREAT in the studio, that is until I started testing fold-downs to 5.1.2 (the most popular consumer format, by far). It all gets summed together and you lose definition and any directionality. For moving objects, I got the best results all around by employing bell-like automation for panning. There are actually several nice curve presets in the Nuendo multichannel panner. So far, I have not had any great experience getting .4 reverb to translate well to fold-downs… 
Sorry if this is a post-only discussion. For music and home theater distribution, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that a .4 “bed” will do more harm than good. (Especially once you get into Apple’s rendering of Atmos for spatial audio for AirPods.)
I keep reading this everywhere and it is a shame. Thanks for the heads up.
I’ve really only just started in atmos so I think I will take that on board. As the composer too I am tempted to go back and remix to 7.1 only.
Watch out for those rear surrounds, too. You have to plan on whatever is in the rear surrounds being mixed in with the sides… (Again, the 5.1.2 downmix and headphones considerations the vast majority of your audience will be hearing) So I’m still playing around with how to treat verb for the rears. Discreet reverb, or just touch of the sides panned to the rears?
I have my top row numbers on the keyboard mapped as shortcuts for the Dolby Atmos Renderer fold down presets so that I can instantly compare 7.1.4 vs 5.1.2 (or whatever) on the fly. Very handy! Last week I was experimenting with discreet reverb at the rears and was not happy with the 5.1.2/5.1 fold down You’re basically mushing two reverbs together into the sides. I’m thinking that for home theater/music, it’s best to just make the 5.1.2 sound great and reserve the 7.1 rears for very light use (for guys like me who run and press their ear to a rear speaker to see what the producer is sending back there. 
), or for sounds & instruments exclusive to the rear that will sound good when folded into the sides.
Just about everything you’ve touched on there were traps I was about to walk into. Thanks.
I have Nuendo control room downmix presets 7.1.4, 7.1, 5.1 and Stereo for composing, but yes adding some additional downmix presets from the renderer makes sense. Since I use touchosc to control them I should be able to group them together with the others.
Were you using quick controls, key commands or logical editor/midi remote to access those?
If you have logic, apple has provided you fully working demo projects of Billie Eilish’s Ocean eyes as well as Lil Nas X - MONTERO Spatial Audio as well as a Spatial Audio Demo Grid, using just the native plugins including reverbs both in stereo and atmos, to compare study, and they translate perfectly to all surround formats including apple binaural. You can also hear the original in apple music and they are quite close.
To be clear, I’m using the external Dolby Atmos Renderer. The number key shortcuts are baked into the app and automatically map to your monitoring set-ups. (I’ve got seven in there right now, including 6.1.4 to check translation to phantom center.)
