Stereo UAD plug-ins in a Dolby Atmos mix

Nuendo
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  1. I’m working in a Dolby Atmos production with Nuendo 12 on PC.
  2. My physical system is 7.1.4
  3. I have several UAD devices and many useful plugins, but stereo (and VST 2, since UAD is very late)
  4. I also have surround plugins that I use, but :
  5. I’d like to use my stereo UAD plugins in an Atmos context because of the DSP of the UAD devices, in order to relieve my processors.

How can I do this? UAD gives an example with LUNA (so Mac) and incredible detours that eat up a lot of objects unnecessarily. Using Nuendo’s routing editor, I try to place several instances of a plugin (let’s say the Oxford EQ) with different outputs, and there’s silence (as soon as there are two instances). I figure I could go through sends to stereo bus before coming back to a 7.1.2 (bed) or 7.1.4 (object) group, but, for a big project, that’s a lot of spaghetti.

Anyone have this experience?

N.B. I’ve just found this thread which touches closely on my question (but doesn’t answer it).
Multi-mono plugins on multichannel audio tracks - Nuendo - Steinberg Forums

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Following as well. The signal passes through but I’m assuming it only affects L/R as the whole signal isn’t affected.

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I have answered this elsewhere:

So far, I think I understand. I’ve been a bit misled by the manual and some threads. Basically, if a stereo signal is routed to a Surround Bus WITH its effect, it will be positioned by the VST Panner according to our choice, WITH its effect. So using a stereo plugin works just as well as the stereo track itself routed to a surround bus (which can be a D. Atmos object or go to a bed). I’ve made it too complicated for myself.

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I’ve experimented with using uad reverbs, mixing various reverbs etc and my personal preference is a decent single reverb! Reverb (especially in a Dolby studio) sounds really messy when using multiple ones. It’s like having too many synths with long tails!
My fav reverb is the dearvr pro and using delays to swirl into the 1 reverb has been my most preferred method.

1 Like
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The way to go is to use true 3D reverbs, like Verberate Immersive, MIR 3D, TaiChi, HD Cart, Seventh Heaven, Stratus 3D, Symphony 3D … everything that’s just stereo will work as an “effect” (i.e. as something artificial), but not as a conclusive, enveloping immersive space.

The second best option is an upmixer like Nugen’s Halo at the output of a stereo reverb, although the usefulness of the results depends largely on the characteristics of the source. I mainly use this approach for effect reverbs such as springs or plates where “positioning” is not a main goal.