Do you have files for which you know that they are in
I have checked my collection and find stereo, joint stereo, single channel - so I would say that %_mode% caters for that, provided the encoder has supplied that information.
For AAC audio "joint stereo" is applied at codec level, in the sense that the benefit that M-S encoding provides to saving bits is part of it. If other bitrate saving techniques are used on channel level then it is an HE-AAC file.
MPEG4 format don’t distinguish between Dual Mono and Normal Stereo, although AAC on frame level can do two single channels instead of paired channels. The reason is that in the MPEG4 format expects that you use different streams of audio instead of hacking the channel configuration.
But I think that some Japanese companies for backward compatible reason use channel configuration 0 to indicate dual mono.
My guess is what MP3tag shows, is the channel configuration ID, (0 is decide by stream object, 1 is mono, 2 stereo, 3 is stereo plus center, etc)
It could be interesting to check the various apps that creates MPEG4 containers, if they use 0 or 2 when adding a MP3 with Dual Mono.