Hey @david8,
I’m sorry, this has been a rough first week, and I understand why you’re out of patience. You bought a dedicated Mac Mini for this, the hardware is fully capable of what you’re asking, and you should be listening to music by now instead of hunting for menus. Let me get you across the line.
First, the greyed-out 2.0 is a handshake problem, not a Roon setting.
When Channel layout is greyed out at 2.0, it’s because macOS is currently reporting your Anthem as a two-channel device. Roon only offers the layouts CoreAudio says the device supports, so when the HDMI link renegotiates down, the dropdown collapses and locks. Over HDMI this happens any time the AVM 60 is off or in standby, is on a different input, or the link re-handshakes after the Mac sleeps. A headless Mac Mini is especially prone to it, because there’s no display on that port holding the link up.
Do these in order, the order matters:
- Power on the AVM 60 and select the HDMI input the Mac Mini is plugged into. Leave it on and on that input for everything below.
- Open Audio MIDI Setup on the Mac and select the Anthem device. The Format line should read 8 ch. If it reads 2 ch, we’re chasing HDMI, not Roon, reseat the HDMI cable at the Mac end (Anthem still powered on), then check again.
- Once Audio MIDI Setup shows 8 ch, quit and restart Roon Server, the whole thing, not just the remote window. Roon reads a device’s capabilities when it takes hold of it, so it needs to look again now that the Mac is seeing eight channels.
- Settings → Audio → Device Setup on the Anthem zone. Channel layout should now be selectable. Set it to 7.1.
To stop it recurring: set the Mac to never sleep (System Settings → Lock Screen, and Energy), and get in the habit of having the Anthem powered on before Roon Server starts.
Second, delete the Speaker Setup module and add it back.
You added Speaker Setup while the zone was stuck at 2.0, so it captured a two-channel layout. That’s why Muse is only showing you two speakers, it’s faithfully reflecting what the zone claimed to be at the moment you created it.
Once step 4 above shows 7.1, remove that module and add it again. It’ll come back with all eight channels.
Getting there: select the Anthem zone → click the volume icon at the bottom right → click the waveform icon (that’s Muse) → Speaker Setup.
Third. the Center/Sub swap:
Now that you have a real 7.1 layout in Muse, fix the swap there rather than in macOS. Speaker Setup lists every channel Roon is working with and lets you reassign them, put Center back on Center and LFE back on the subwoofer. Fixing it in Roon means it survives macOS updates and HDMI renegotiations; the Audio MIDI Setup speaker map does not.
Worth understanding why this happened at all, because it’s not a bug: VLC plays through the macOS mixer, which applies the speaker map from Audio MIDI Setup’s Configure Speakers page. Roon in Exclusive Mode deliberately bypasses that mixer so nothing in the OS touches your audio, which also means it doesn’t inherit the OS’s remap. That’s exactly why VLC sounded right and Roon didn’t. It’s a tradeoff we make on purpose, and Speaker Setup is where you correct for it, once.
On the menus:
There is a logic to it, and I think it’ll click quickly. Roon keeps two categories deliberately apart:
- Settings → Audio → Device Setup, what the hardware is and what it’s capable of. Set once, then forget it exists.
- Muse, per zone, what you want done to the music in this room. Changes with the room, the material, and your mood.
Every setting sits on one side of that line, consistently, everywhere in the app. We don’t collapse them into a single page the way JRiver does because a Roon system is usually many zones and many endpoints, and per-device facts and per-room preferences don’t travel together. It’s one concept to learn instead of a page to memorize, and once you have it the app stops feeling random.
The other half of that design is worth seeing for yourself once this is running: start a 5.1 track and click the signal path light. You’ll get every step between the file on disk and your speakers, and whether anything altered it along the way. I don’t know of another player that will show you that, and it’s the reason a channel mapping issue in Roon is diagnosable in three clicks rather than guesswork.
Run steps 1–4 and tell me what Audio MIDI Setup reports at step 2. That one number tells us whether we’re chasing Roon or chasing an HDMI link. If the layout is still greyed out while the Mac is reporting 8 ch, say so here and we’ll pull fresh Roon Server logs for additional diagnostics. 
