Regardless of whether someone thought the resulting system would be 'stereo', is there any chance that could simply be referring to the left and right sides of the room? You mentioned the speakers wired as two zone, if one zone is the speakers on the left half of the room and the other the speakers on the right half then would the labeling not only be accurate but also possibly useful?
Of course that is a very real (and useful) possibility. I didn't think of that-I guess because I have simply run into to many cases where people wanted a "stereo" ceiling speaker install.
Because they thought "stereo" was better.
But then again-it could be wired up so that every other speaker was on the right or left-so it could be "stereo"-but only for the people sitting in just the right spots.
S shame on me for jumping to conclusions-based on limited information. But then again-without further testing-who knows how it is wired.
Of course it is VERY easy to test-even without a 70V amp. Just hookup any amp and put some signal into ONE side and see what speakers produce sound.
A quick and easy test will revel quite a bit about the system.
So people can speculate for days-but a 1 minute test can revel the TRUE answer.
As a wise man (Don Davis?) once said. Even the best analyzer on the market cannot tell what is being said from a waveform. But a $2 plastic speaker can. So what is better? It depends on what you are doing and want to know.