@sgreg1 Bass may be omnidirectional, which is a property of our hearing, but there is NO guarantee from recording to recording, that the signal below 80Hz has been combined and evenly distributed to the L&R channels.
The mastering engineer must chose to do this, and we have no idea when or if this ever happens.
In other words, bass may not be heard as directional but the bass in a recording is not necessarily monophonic.