I forget what video I watched that explained this, but it essentially said:
“The audio mixing is correct. It is mixed for full surround sound, like those you see in home theaters (probably the very expensive setups!) and actual theaters. There is no reason to have dual-mixed sound, one for those with stereo speakers and one for the surround sound setups, so they don’t.”
openSUSE Tumbleweed made me a full Linux convert. I have “messed up” quite a few times, since I’m still very much a Linux noob, but openSUSE gave me that real confidence in my setup that I now boot into Windows only for a program or game that won’t work with what I am needing at the moment, which is almost 10% of the time. Modding games is a hobby, and that’s still not as easy as it is in Windows. Come on Nexus Mods, you can do it! :'-)
It does look like there is a much bigger cage in the background. Either way, thank you for the very in-depth explanation for hamsters. I literally had no idea (never wanted one, but they are very cute), so now I know what to look for if I ever meet someone who has one! Cheers!