Thanks for your comments... informative.
When you say
" It has much lower distortion than all the others, due to it's intrinsic R-Core design. It " lures" the listener into the music, and plays melodically in a way that I think is impossible - for a non R-core."
Is the lower distortion comment purely subjective ?
Or have you made measurements ?
Totally subjective. But when you
read the URLs I gave on the R-Core, you can deduce what is happening easily !
Think about this : Unlike all other outputs, in a R-Core, the primary is wound on one leg of the R-Core, and the secondary is would on the other lag. And this Softone's R-Core
winding is done in a "balanced" fashion.
In
all other outputs, the primary and secondary are wound
on top of each other !!! Compared to Softone's R-Core, that is highly undesirable engineering.
To gain efficiency, the better conventional output transformers use a technique called "interleaving". The " more interleaving the better ",..... so it is said. But there is an almost never-discussed and realized trade-off to interleaving, VS: the R-Cores' needing
no interleaving.
Every interleave introduces opposite phase-current anomalies to the winding, and it confuses the original signal, such that
all the non R-Cores only play gross information well, but in
a confused and muddled way, VS a Softone output.
I am not so sure that some of these things can be easily measured. However, from the very first time five of us audiophiles heard an RW-20 , ( with only about 80 hours of break-in time on it, about 20 months ago ), it was very easy for all of us present, to hear how
special sounding, and low in distortion, it played.
Since then, that amp's owner tells me the RW-20 has fully broken in and displays a lovely extended top end. He and I both agree, the RW-20's bass transient delivery ( I can already hear ) is lightning fast !!
I hope what I explained is more meaningful, understood, and
useful to people who listen than " distortion dropped 25% from 0.04 % to 0.03%. !!!!
Please do note this, in both cases above, the RW-20's stock leads ( which are very decent ) have been wire augmented, as shown in this thread. These outputs are used in similar Directly Coupled two stage tube amps with 6 Ohm DCR chokes.
I hope this post helps people !!! Thank you for viewing this.