For reasons I don’t want to get into here, I’ve decided to try running my music (not post) studio with a 6.1.4 speaker setup. Is there any way I can have a 7.1.4 channel configuration in Nuendo, but set up monitoring in the Nuendo Control Room for 6.1.4? All I can find is 6.1 “Music.”
Note that when mixing for Atmos, the external Dolby Atmos Renderer can indeed configure a 6.1.4 monitoring configuration, which uses phantom center for center channel content. I need the same for tracking and composition in Nuendo.
I found a workaround where when using the Nuendo internal Dolby Atmos Renderer, I can open the main 7.1.4 output bus multipanner and deselect/turn off the center speaker. Center channel audio is then routed to a phantom center in the left and right speakers for monitoring only. This works because at this point the main output bus is used for monitoring and not processing the Atmos mix (the Atmos Renderer plugin sits in an insert ahead of the multipanner). You can confirm center channel info is properly routing to the center speaker channel in Atmos via meters in the Nuendo Renderer for Dolby Atmos plugin.
I hope this helps other music engineers interested in a phantom center workflow. Otherwise, there are not many options for setting this up outside of using the external Dolby Atmos Renderer. (DADman is probably the most common option, but of course limited to DAD or AVID MTRX interface units.)