Southwest Audio Fest 2026 — Part 1: Big Sound, New Gear, & Standout Rooms
Inside the systems, innovators, and breakout moments that defined SWAF 2026.
SWAF 2026 Luxury Hi-FI Show Report By Mike Harkins

  Southwest Audio Fest 2026 took place at a wonderful new venue, the Sheraton Dallas Hotel in the downtown area of one of the biggest cities in Texas and the U.S. Show organizers Lou Hinkley and Gary Gill, of the Pacific Audio Fest and the Capital Audio Fest respectively, team up on this event by meeting midway between both events, which is now in its third year. This new venue, Gary says, is perfect for an audio show.

Larger ballroom-sized venues are on the second floor where the show's registration desk was located. And there are eight larger rooms found on the fourth floor. Most rooms seemed acoustically better than one might find in the typical hotel room. One of the ballroom venues on floor 2 was the show's Marketplace area, which is a popular feature of SWAF. In addition, floor 2 features a nicely set-up seminar theater away from the noisy areas for several talks given by some of the show's audio celebrities.

Joey Zhang And Gary Gill

The huge show venue offers exhibitors several room sizes to choose from. All hotel rooms are 9 feet in height, with the standard room about 13.5 feet by 19 feet. King suites are larger entry rooms with a bedroom of 14.5 feet by 22.5 feet for additional exhibits if desired. Queen suites have more room at 27 feet by 14.5 feet.  Presidential suites are even larger L-shaped rooms, more than twice the size of the others.

A first among audio shows, this event started on Thursday with a half-day event starting at 2 PM through 8 PM and ended on Saturday at 6 PM. Gary explained that the hours of operation on day one were adjusted to allow more attendance by folks getting off work at 5 PM. They are experimenting with the timing since this is the first such event to start on a Thursday.

Opening day, July 23rd, started a bit slow, but soon the halls and rooms began to fill up with enthusiastic patrons. Elevator talk indicated that newcomers were likely to come back next year for more.

The many different exhibit room sizes added a lot of flexibility to this year's show and allowed most rooms to display their wares with considerable panache compared to what was available previously. This made for a superb setting for a mid-summer dive into audio euphoria.

Where To Focus?
The best-laid plans are put aside after exposure to a few rooms at the show. I spent time seeking out rooms that I thought might provide good value and high performance, but one can easily get sucked into any of the rooms where crowds gathered to hear good music on a great system. I tried to focus on some lesser-known brands that are good value, and on products that improve room acoustics in various ways. I'm also on the lookout for products that merit an Enjoy the Music.com SWAF 2026 Blue Note Award, but I'll get to that in part II of this article.

Room 1155: Reference Analog
Few rooms were open before the show's 2 PM start time, but I did find a couple of them with doors wide open ready to greet visitors. The first of these was the only exhibitor on the 11th floor, Oklahoma dealer, Reference Audio. Jeff Harris (See Photo) is the kingpin of that operation, and he proudly displayed many of the high-end products he offers at his store. One of them is the DOhman Helix One turntable ($80,000) outfitted with a 12-inch Supatrac Nighthawk tonearm ($21,000) and a top-of-the-line Hana Unami Black cartridge ($11,500) playing through a Boulder 2108 phono preamp ($62,000) and a Boulder 2160 power amp ($71,000) into Rockport Orion speakers ($159,000).

This is a setup for well-healed audiophiles who want the best. I have not heard better imaging than I heard in this room. Other products on display included an Audio Research Reference 20 preamp ($48,000), DS Audio Ion001 antistatic powered brush ($2,000) for cleaning and removing record static charge, DCS Rossini DAC ($34,500), DCS Rossini Clock ($12,100), and Nihon Onkyo Engineering acoustic peripherals ($11,185). In addition, Nordost Cable Looms and power products along with HRS platforms and stands added another $413,000 to the total cost of products in the room.

Room 834: Sharada Audio
The entrepreneurial spirit abounds at SWAF. Newbie exhibitors strike out on their own into the often-crowded HiFi marketplace. One of these brave designers and entrepreneurs is Pavan Chintapalli of Sharada Audio. Their specialty is a line of streamers, reclockers, Ethernet regenerators, and other digital/analog products that can produce glorious musical sound. Sharada also makes a class D amplifier that doesn't use the standard amplifier modules that are currently available. They are built from scratch.

Pavan seems keenly aware of the challenges of making digital sound musical, and these products are aimed at solving problems in search of the finest digital sound possible. I was unable to get a price list from Pavan because the products shown are not yet in full production. But I encourage readers to head to their website for more information. Pavan used Salk monitors (out of production) and a couple of his own designs (not for sale) for reproduction of music in this room.

Sharada Audio also offers music discovery and playback software. The music discovery application is called songScout. It uses AI-powered software helps you unlock your NAS music library by indexing your collection, matching music to moods, sounds, artists, albums, and listening cues (such as heavy bass content). You can also find relationships between artists that are not obvious.

For example, someone might start with Miles Davis and follow a collaboration path through the musicians connected to him, such as John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, or Tony Williams. From there, the listener can move into related albums, side projects, genres, and eras in a way that feels like following the actual story of the music. A user can start with an artist, album, genre, instrument, or mood, and songScout builds a listening route around that starting point. Seems like a great way to better organize music, and the subscription price is $4.99 per month (or less for a yearly subscription).

Sharada Audio also offers a free Windows-based software application to play music from stored files on your computer or from any storage device connected to your computer on your home network. It's called playDesk. It turns your Windows computer into a serious local audio hub. You can't get better value than this because it's free.

Room 843: Decibel+, Atlantis Lab, Neoson, Benny Audio, Audio Byte, Music Tools, And Audience
Here I found Class A tube nirvana strongly present. Neoson, a new artisanal company based in France, has designed and built a four-tube Class A integrated amplifier with 10 Watts per channel into 8 Ohms. It is the Neoson Genèse, priced at $7,885. Playing music within the room were a pair of French-designed Atlantis Lab model AT16 speakers priced reasonably at $3,217.

These are 4 Ohm speakers with better than 94dB/W/m sensitivity, containing a 1" compression tweeter and two 5.1" Eighteen Sound woofers in "face-to-face" arrangement. The speakers feature a user-adjustable port. The room also featured an Audio Byte SuperVOX DAC ($4,500) which uses a powerful Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip to produce reconstructed audio results characteristic of R2R ladders without resorting to expensive ladder technology which uses super high precision (and high cost) resistors.

Also on display was an Audio Byte SuperHUB native I²S streamer which touts nearly endless methods of connectivity and streaming service compatibility, a 3" screen, and novel anti-jitter technology for $4,000. My requested recording of Patrick Doyle's "The Ghost" from the Hamlet film score played beautifully with excellent imaging on the Atlantis Lab speakers, although that lowest octave bass drum was somewhat elusive. But these are under $4K speakers.

In the photo, Gabriel has his hand on one of the Atlantis Lab AT16 speakers. The electronics are comparatively small and located on the center table. They are (from top to bottom) the Audio Byte Super VOX, the Audio Byte SuperHUB, and (lower shelf) the NeosonGenèse integrated amp.

Room Pearl 3: Effortless HiFi And Grandinote
Max Serra is the Italian master who has designed and built these beautiful and tuneful pieces of audio gear. He does it all: loudspeakers, DAC, phono stage, amplifiers, the works! I can't begin to explain in this briefing all the technology built into Grandinote gear, but I will say that the goal has been to create the best from both the solid-state and hollow-state world (Magnetosolid technology) and deliver it through some masterfully voiced loudspeakers. You will have to go to the Grandinote website for an explanation of the technology, including the use of mechanical crossovers in the loudspeakers as opposed to passive circuitry and the use of a solid-state amplifier push-pull design that has authentic tube characteristics.

The Grandinote Mach 8 Evoluzione loudspeakers ($128,000) seemed a little large for this small, nearly square room, but I was assured by Alexey Vedernikov of Effortless Hifi that they play well even in small rooms. Max and Alexey are pictured in the room photo below. You can see from the photo that the Grandinote Mach 8 Evoluzione loudspeakers are over 6 feet tall and contain 8 bass / mid drivers of the same size. This is the secret to the specified 98dB/W/m sensitivity of these loudspeakers. They are not power hogs.

What did I hear in the room? I listened to several tracks: "Keith Don't Go" by Nils Lofgren, "Layla" (live) by Eric Clapton, and "Take Five" by Kenichi Tsunoda Big Band. When seated near the room's sweet spot, I was treated to a well-imaged soundstage with a bass response that seemed unlimited at the lowest end, but I think the room impacted bass smoothness to some extent. The sound of the Eric Clapton track seemed a bit forward to me but the Kenichi Tsunoda track was very nicely done with excellent instrument timbre and dynamics. "Keith Don't Go" by Nils Lofgren is a gem of a track featured at audio shows for its sparkle and dynamics. It was certainly all there in this room thanks to the Grandinote electronics and loudspeakers.

Room 842: Eversolo, IsoAcoustics, And Gauder Akustik
Intrigued as I was by the beautifully adorned Eversolo gear and the Gauder Akustik loudspeakers in this room, I focused my attention on something much smaller, but perhaps one of the best values at the show. I'm talking about IsoAcoustics newly improved Gaia isolators. These are small discs about 2.5" in diameter by 2" or so in height (depending on model) that isolate speakers from the floor, thereby enhancing sound quality.

Room host John Bevier of IsoAcoustics demonstrated these isolators, using two identical pairs of Gauder Akustik loudspeakers (see photo). The one on the left had the isolators installed. The one on the right had the spike footers supplied by the speaker manufacturer. I should point out that the speaker height with the isolators was about an inch higher than the one without, but I adjusted my head to compensate when listening. What I heard was clearer focus and a bit more coherent bass response with the isolators compared to the standard spike footers.

IsoAcoustics makes a full line of isolation products, and pricing depends on the model. The new models feature several improvements. For one, they are directional. Side-to-side damping is different than front-to-back, so one must orient them properly. In addition, they offer custom threaded inserts to fit your speakers exactly. And, height adjustments can be made more easily to tilt the speaker slightly for better performance in your listening space. They also include a caster arrangement for easier movement on floor surfaces. IsoAcoustics is still offering the original Gaia models for those wanting a less costly option with slightly fewer features while maintaining excellent isolation and damping.

Pricing: GAIA I Neo $875, GAIA II Neo $520, GAIA III Neo $355
Eversolo T10 $2,180 streamer, DAC-Z10 $1,980 DAC, and AMP-F10 $2,480 amplifier
SilentPower OmniLAN $799 Fiber optic devise
Gauder Arcona 80 SD $13,975 a pair

Part 2: Coming Up Soon!
More rooms, more gear, more people, and a couple of high-fidelity talks along with goings on in the Marketplace will be featured in part 2. What are the best things I saw and heard at SWAF 2026? Stay tuned.

---> Back to the main SWAF 2026 luxury hi-fi show report homepage.