Steinberg Nuendo 3 Operation Manual

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Using the Surround Panner
Nuendo has a special feature for graphically positioning a sound 
source in a surround field. This is actually a special plug-in which dis-
tributes the audio from the channel in various proportions to the sur-
round channels.
1.Open the mixer and locate the channel you wish to position.
This could be a mono or stereo channel.
2.From the output routing pop-up menu, select the “whole surround bus” 
option (not a specific speaker channel).
A miniature graph of the surround plug-in interface appears above the fader in the 
channel strip.
When the “whole surround bus” is selected, the channel strip shows a miniature 
surround control. 
3.Click and drag directly in the miniature image to move the sound in 
the surround field.
The horizontal red strip to the right controls the subbass (LFE) level (if available in the 
selected surround format).
•You can also view a slightly larger version of this control by selecting 
“Surround Pan” on the view options pop-up for the extended mixer 
panel.
This mode offers click and drag-panning as well as numerical values for left/right bal-
ance, front/rear balance and LFE amount – type or use a mouse wheel to adjust them.
•For total control over surround panning, you can double click on the 
miniature image to open the full Surround Panner interface in a sepa-
rate window.  
						

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The SurroundPan controls
The SurroundPan plug-in interface in Standard, Position and Angle mode, 
respectively.
The SurroundPan plug-in allows you to position your audio in the sur-
round field. It consists of an image of the speaker arrangement, as de-
fined by the output bus selected on the output routing pop-up menu, 
with the sound source indicated as a grey ball. 
The following options and methods are available:
Mode – Standard/Position/Angle
The Standard Mode/Position Mode/Angle Mode switch allows you to 
work in three modes:
• In both Standard and Position mode, the speakers in the front are aligned, as 
they would normally be in a cinema-type situation. This means that the front 
speakers are at a varying distance from the center. Standard mode (default) is 
the best mode for moving sources between speakers without level attenuation.
• Angle Mode is the traditional surround sound mixing definition. Note that here 
the speakers are defined as being at equal distance from the center. This is 
not really a true representation of for example a cinema, but has still proven to 
work well in many situations.    
						

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Speakers
The speakers in the panel represent the chosen surround configuration. 
•The speakers in the front are aligned, as they would normally be in a 
cinema-type situation. 
This means that the front speakers are at a varying distance from the center, allowing 
you to move sources between speakers without level attenuation.
•You can turn speakers on and off by clicking them with [Alt]/[Option] 
pressed. When a speaker is turned off, no audio will be routed to that 
surround channel.
Positioning and levels
The text below assumes that the Mono/Stereo pop-up is set to “Mono 
Mix”. For more information on the other modes, see below.
A sound source is positioned either by clicking or by dragging the grey 
“ball” around in the panel (or by using key commands, see below). By 
dragging during playback you can record automation, see page 333.
•In Standard Mode, the signal levels from the individual speakers are in-
dicated by colored lines from the speakers to the center of the display.
•In Position Mode, the concentric circles will help you determine the 
level of the signal at a certain position.
The yellow circle represents -3dB below nominal level, the red circle is at -6dB and the 
blue is located at -12dB. These are affected by attenuation, see below.
•In Angle Mode, a red arc helps you determine the perceived “range” 
of a source. The sound will be at its loudest in the middle of the arc 
and will have dropped in level towards the ends.
Exactly how levels are handled may require some explanation:
•When you move a source around, a number will indicate the loudness 
in each speaker.
This is a value in dB (decibel) and is relative to the nominal level of the source. In other 
words, 0.0 (dB) represents full level.
•If you position the source far enough away from a speaker, its level will 
drop to zero (indicated by an infinity symbol). 
						

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•The signal levels from the individual speakers are indicated by colored 
lines from the speakers to the center of the display.
•You can use modifier keys to restrict movement in various ways:
In Standard and Position Mode:
In Angle Mode:
There is also a special set of key commands for working in the 
SurroundPan window.
For a complete list of the available key commands, click on the 
“SurroundPanner” logo and then click again!
Key Movement restriction
[Shift] Horizontally only
[Ctrl]/[Command] Vertically only
[Alt]/[Option] Diagonally (up left, down right)
[Ctrl]/[Command]+ 
[Alt]/[Option]Diagonally (up right, down left)
Key Movement restriction
[Shift] From center to perimeter only.
[Ctrl]/[Command] Along the perimeter only (at current distance from center) 
						

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The LFE dial (All Modes)
If the selected surround setup includes an LFE (Low Frequency Effects) 
channel, a separate LFE level dial will be available in the SurroundPan 
window. Use this to set the signal amount sent to the LFE channel. You 
can also set this using the small red strip to the right of the Surround 
Panner in the mixer channel strip, or by typing in a numerical value in the 
larger Surround Panner that can be shown in the extended channel 
strip.
The Surround Panner in the channel strip (bottom) and in the extended panel of the 
mixer channel strip (“SurroundPan” activated).
...or drag this control to set the LFE level.Click here and type in an LFE level value...   
						

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Mono/Stereo pop-up (All Modes)
If you have a mono channel the Mono/Stereo pop-up is by default set 
to Mono Mix. The panner will then behave as described above.
If you have a stereo channel, you have the option of using one of the 
three Mirror modes. Two grey balls will then appear, one for each 
channel (L/R). This will allow you to move the two channels symmetri-
cally, by just dragging one of them. The three modes allow you to se-
lect which axis should be used for mirroring.
• The default mode for stereo channels is the Y-Mirror mode.
• If you run a stereo signal through the panner in Mono Mix mode, the two chan-
nels will be mixed together before entering the plug-in.
• If you run a mono signal through the plug-in in one of the stereo modes, the 
signal will be split before entering the plug-in.
Additional Parameters (Standard Mode)
•Center Level.
This determines how center source signals should be reproduced by the front speak-
ers. With a value of 100%, the center speaker will provide the center source. With a 
value of 0%, the center source will be provided by the ghost image created by the left 
and right speakers. Other values will produce a mix between these two methods.
•Divergence Controls.
The three divergence controls determine the attenuation curves used when positioning 
sound sources, for X-axis front, X-axis back and Y-axis (front/rear), respectively. If all 
three Divergence values are 0% (default), positioning a sound source on a speaker will 
set all other speakers to zero level (-∞) (except for the center speaker which depends 
on the center level). With higher values, the other speakers will receive a percentage of 
the sound source.  
						

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Additional Parameters (Position and Angle Mode)
•Attenuate.
Attenuate can be used to amplify or weaken the source. Exactly what effect this has on 
the level in each speaker can be determined by the level readouts, the concentric cir-
cle (Position mode) and the arc (Angle mode).
•Normalize.
Normalize is a function for controlling the overall loudness from all speakers. When this 
is set to 1.0 (full normalization), the level from all speakers together is always exactly 
0dB. The individual levels will then be boosted or attenuated accordingly.
Please note that this is not a dynamic feature, like compression or limit-
ing. It is instead just a tool for scaling the nominal output levels from the 
surround channels.
Automation
All parameters in the SurroundPan plug-in can be automated, just as 
with any other plug-in. See page 333.
Mixconvert
Mixconvert is a special plugin that converts one multi-channel audio 
source into another multi-channel destination. It is most frequently 
used to “downmix” a multi-channel surround mix into another format 
with less channels (a 5.1 surround mix into a stereo mix for example).
This plugin can be used as an insert effect in the mixer like other plug-
ins but it also has special functions. Nuendo will automatically insert 
Mixconvert in place of the surround panner in cases where the chan-
nel (audio track, group channel etc...) is being routed to a destination 
that has fewer audio paths. Mixconvert will also be inserted in place of 
any aux send panner when the destination has a different audio path 
than the source. The surround panner’s displays and controls will be 
replaced by Mixconvert’s.  
						

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Please refer to the Audio Effects and VST Instruments document for 
detailed information on the operation of Mixconvert.
• There is one exception to this behavior. When a stereo channel is routed 
to a mono destination through the channel routing or an aux send routing, 
a normal panner will appear. However, this panner will control the balance 
of the left and right channels as they are blended into the mono destina-
tion. The center position blends both channels together equally. With the 
pan set all the way to the left, only the left channel will be heard. With the 
pan set all the way to the right, only the right channel will be heard.
Exporting a Surround mix
When you have set up a surround mix you can choose to export it with 
the Export Audio Mixdown function. This function exports a single se-
lected output bus – this means that all channels that you want to be 
part of the mix must be routed to the surround output bus.
You have the following export options when doing surround work:
• Export to “split” format, resulting in one mono audio file for each surround 
channel.
• Export to interleaved format, resulting in a single multi-channel audio file (e.g. 
a 5.1 file, containing all six surround channels).
• Under Windows you can also export a 5.1 surround mix to a file in Windows 
Media Audio Pro format.
This is an encoding format tailored for 5.1 surround – see page 563.
• You can also export a surround mix to a Dolby Digital AC3 file or a DTS file, if 
you have the Steinberg Dolby Digital Encoder or the Steinberg DTS Encoder 
(both optional, separate plug-ins) installed in your system.
Please go to www. steinberg.net for details.
For more about exporting to files, see the chapter “Export Audio Mix-
down”. 
						

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Using effects in surround configurations
Nuendo introduces a special surround format for VST plug-ins, that is 
plug-ins that can process more than two channels. Mix8to2 is an ex-
ample of such a plug-in.
Applying a Surround-aware plug-in
This is not different from applying a regular plug-in. The only differ-
ence is that the plug-in panel may have controls for more than two 
channels.
Using a stereo plug-in in a surround configuration
Normally, when you apply a stereo insert effect to a surround configu-
ration, the first two speaker channels (often L and R) are routed 
through the plug-in and other channels are left unprocessed. 
However, you may want to use the plug-in on other speaker channels. 
This is described on page 266. 
						

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