A further question comes to mind for those familiar with audio mixing for Stereo (for current most music and the stereo only film tracks) and mixing for 5.1 (for some recent music and most current film):

When mixing for stereo, with or without surround sound encoding, everything is in those two tracks, including any added LFE. It is up to the consumer and his or her equipment to replay as stereo or ‘decode’ surround sound. This presents a not-as-complex situation for low frequency signals and the use of 1, 2 or 3 subs.

Now let us consider 5.1, and perhaps other discrete multi-channel methods. According to SH, the FL and FR of 5.1 will not contain the LFE signal, although the LFE may contain the lowest of the FL and FR music information for low-end reinforcement. Bossobass appears to indicate that the L and R will contain the LFE. Is there a contradiction here? Or can a distinction be made between the L/R signal of stereo and the FL/FR signal of 5.1 in that L/R contains all low frequency information and FL/FR does not? In other words, if one were to compare the L and R signals of stereo out with the FL and FR signals of 5.1, one would find quite a few differences? And, if there are differences, are the differences with regard to stereo vs. multi-channel for film different from the differences between stereo and multi-channel for music?

Yikes!