Soundroid, I just wondered what program you’re currently using for this?
In Wavelab, 5.1 mastering is usually done on 4 tracks:
1 Stereo Track for Lf Rf
1 Stereo Track for Ls Rs
1 Mono Track for Center
1 Mono Track for LFE
You can see that if you make a new montage using the 5.1 montage template. It gives you a lot of flexibility if used with clip plugins, but would mean a lot of plugins (although fewer than if you have 6 separate mono tracks.). But you can use any plugins since you’re not restricted to multichannel plugins only, and many don’t come with multichannel versions.
There are requests for Multichannel File support and track fx automation in the montage. Don’t know when that will happen though.