Hi Rajiv,
Nuendo forced me to reverse the rear and side monitor cables. No choice, I guess. From there, PT doesn’t know. So I have to adjust, don’t I? I’m a bit confused about this. Did I do the right thing by inverting the output cables? The Apollo x16 follows Dolby, but SB follows Microsoft. We’re like a slice of ham between two slices of bread.
It seems to me that there was a difficulty on this point. But I confess I don’t remember. What you’re saying is that everything is possible on the software side, no need to modify the physical connections?
So when the Nuendo manual says that, it’s sticking to the Nuendo configuration, right? :
In Nuendo, the order of surround and side channels conforms to the Microsoft Inc. standard. For Dolby-compliant side and rear surround channels, swap the peripheral ports of the surround and side channels.
Update. I just saw your picture. Yes, I’ve probably made things too complicated for myself. At the moment, I’m not touching anything for my current projects on N12, because everything’s going well on that front, but I’ll look at it again next time. Many thanks.
I agree. Not sure why I didn’t recommend that. I’m maybe a bit of an idiot?
I think what BSound is getting at is that the “error” is in the panning and what you did was swap channels in hardware. But if you use Control Room for monitoring then your target monitoring paths have their interface outputs set by you, so you can do the swap there in Control Room instead.
So the monitoring swap is not that big of a deal. What is a big deal is that most plugins respect the SB order in their I/O - but some do not and require re-routing in and out of the plugin. There’s examination of this issue earlier in this thread, Oct 2022. That’s the main pain point for me, if all the deliverables are ok as others report.
I agree it should be switchable, however…
When younplay with Dolby a more complex channel counts and as them what order IO should be, they again say, there IS no standard, and that they really can’t recommend anything, basically the recommendation that can be used is the default output routing from the cinema renderer, but as that is always predefined by the Dolby tech that sets it up for your specific studio it is still their personal preferred way to set the IO and not a standard as such.
It would be nice to have a standard though.
Ok, I’ve just had a look at all this and reread this dizzying thread. The first thing I’d like to say is that SB should help. I don’t understand his silence on such a crucial point, when he’s a major player.
Once that’s been said, I understand that it wasn’t useful to invert (as I did) the rear and side physical connections. But I did this before switching my Dolby Atmos monitoring to the Control Room. Indeed, the “studio configuration” (as it’s called in French) doesn’t allow you to choose channels, only their names. The Control Room, on the other hand, which is one of Nuendo’s great strengths (yes, yes, I’m talking, despite the horrible red button), does. So, an inversion at this level is enough to adapt Nuendo’s monitoring to Dolby Atmos reality (and UAD in my case, which follows the latter). What’s more, with SoundID Reference inserted in this same Control Room, all is well (or so I hope). A further advantage of this Control Room is its ability to manage monitors, each of which can be soloed and other listening choices made on the fly. It’s a marvel that saves us a very expensive hardware monitoring solution (UAD promises this with its latest version of the Apollo interface, but as soon as we return to Nuendo the monitoring window is hidden, making monitoring difficult - this will be corrected at UAD, I hear). And by using Nuendo’s Control Room to bypass the inconsistency between SB and DA in terms of rear and side channels, we retain the right configuration for any similar work outside Nuendo.
There’s still the problem of certain plugins in Nuendo sessions, a problem that frankly surprises and bewilders me, as the master should be the DAW, with the plugins as slaves (except in external entities like VE Pro). As for me, I’ve just read above that Cinematic Room and Aural PSP are working properly. Phew. I hope that Wave’s Spherix Compressor works well too. I also hope that Vienna Suite PRO (VSL) works properly (I trust VSL, but you never know). Then Fabfilter’s Pro-Q 3.
Any response will be appreciated.
Make sure to tell me immediately if you encounter any problems in this respect. We in fact had issues in ProTools, but I use VS Pro and MIR Pro 3D in 5.1.4, 7.1.4 and raw Ambisonics in Nuendo day in, day out. 
Unfortunately it’s not that simple (master/slave) at the VST dev level. VST3 particularly involves a complicated negotiation between plug and host at instantiation about which channel formats are to be supported by the plug. There are several ways the plugin Dev can implement this so we are at they’re mercy. And VST3 is BETTER than VST2 in this regard.
For Fabfilter I can report that Pro R2 is correct, even though it’s metering is a different order ( L C R…).
Just to confuse matters even further. I compared a 7.1.4 re-render done just now (Renderer version 5.2) with one done last year, and the sides and rears have swapped again. Rears are now before sides, when previously (as in the manual linked in my post above) sides were first. This caused much head-scratching as to why the mix sounded so different.
To confuse matters even more, the information above (which was page 273 of the Renderer manual) is no longer in the latest (5.2) manual, which instead refers you to the WAVEX spec. And I don’t know about you, but information on the WAVEX spec is very difficult to come by.
It’s a mess.
I should say, the channels do at least appear to be labelled now. But if you do what I did, and dropped the new render into an Nuendo template set up to deal with 7.1.4 renders with the previous layout… chaos.
Unless, of course, it’s just me!
It’s not just you.
Rendering stems even without the renderer is a mess.
There is a standard. Its SMPTE/ITU!
and Dolby are following it, or are you saying thats changed in v5.2 DAR standalone?
SB and PT on the other hand are still messing around with their wrong channel order making a mess for us all and insisting they are right. It really sucks, I was hoping SB would come to their senses in v13…nnnup.
The bigger the user base, the more you have to be careful with backward compatibility I suppose…
Yes. This.
Just about to use SoundID in 7.1.4. What is the proper setup then with Cubendo? Swap the speakers in SoundID? Nuendo control room speaker delay plugin?
I have never had an issue with 7.1.4 routing in N13 mixing in Dolby Atmos. The only 3rd party issue was Penteo 6.0.5 had the wrong routing. 6.07 fixed this.
The SoundID plugin is normally put on the control room insert.
It should know its in Cubendo and compensates for Steinbergs craziness internally like some other plugins. LCRLfeLsRsLrsRrs
Whether or not a plugin will show SB or the right order in its metering is another story. Because SB order is the exception.
So when you export a 7.1 or higher stem or submix straight from a group (not utilising dolby plugin) what channel order is your resultant multi wav export?
In this business, I don’t know where I stand, and I don’t seem to be the only one.
Last adventure: when Nuendo crashes or freezes, it modifies the audio connections (in my case in the control room), I don’t know why. During the last few crashes, I forgot this fact. And so I continued mixing with an inversion of the side and rear channels. It’s terrible.
I also have to say that Nuendo, after a crash, doesn’t even know what audio interface it had in memory (it defaults to one of my screens at the link to my UAD). But then, it says so and returns us to the options. But when it comes to audio connections, there’s silence.
Big trap!
Another question: if we reverse the side and rear channels in the control room audio connections, in a session with the internal Renderer, does the ADM export remain Dolby-compliant, or does it carry the Nuendo inconsistency?
Many plugins, including dolby internal renderer, are aware of SB wrong order as a special case, and internally swap them. Possibly via the VST3 spec.
So the answer to your question AFAIK is yes. It comes out of the Dolby internal plugin in the correct order. As long as you dont swap it using a plugin before it goes to the renderer.
Some plugins wont actually reflect this in their metering however since the graphic is baked in with the format that SHOULD be used.
But still my question to the group remains unanswered. When you export a multichannel 7.1 or higher direct from a Group track, do you ever find the channels in the correct order?
For me it’s no. The channels export with rears and sides flipped as per SB wrong standard. This is a big PITA because 7.1 multiwav group stems is a composers typical deliverable format to the film mixer in small to medium budget films. As opposed to numerous individual unmixed stereo stems in a bigger budget that has a separate music mix.
