Nuendo says that it supports surround plug-ins and is capable of surround mixes. Does it do AC3 files? Or does it need some kind of authoring software for that. I am not up on the surround technology. I thought it had to be coded and decoded by something like Kind of Loud’s Smart code?
Sweetwater Sales Engineer Jeff Spencer jumps in with the answer to this one. He says:
You are correct. AC3 is just one type of surround encoding, albeit a very popular one right now. As far as I know Nuendo isn’t capable of that type of encoding as part of the program. Nor are any of the other major DAW programs I’m aware of. This is technically not part of the plug-in or mixing side of things, but instead a method or protocol for taking a surround mix that is made up of six (in this case) separate channels of sound (Left, Center, Right, L-Surround, R-Surround, and LFE channel) and coding it into a composite signal that can be authored to something like DVD or some other format designed for multi-channel audio. There are programs such as the Smart Code Pro from Kind of Loud you mention that are specifically for this encoding, but quite often projects are delivered to a mastering house or the company authoring the DVD in their raw six channel format and the coding is done there.