Southwest Audio Fest 2026 Show Report: The Rooms, Systems, & Moments That Defined This Year's Show
A detailed listening journey through SWAF 2026 festivities' most engaging setups, breakthrough designs, and unforgettable musical experiences.
Southwest Audio Fest 2026 Show Report By Paul Schumann

Hegel
Leave it to the Scandinavians to do something simple and elegant. During my time at Enjoy the Music.com, I've been lucky enough to review two of Hegel's excellent integrated amplifiers, the Hegel H150 (reveiwed) and Hegel H400 (reviewed). For SWAF, Hegel presented the big brother of their family, the H600 ($12,500). The H600 has a built-in streamer and cranks out 303 Wpc. The H600 was hooked up to a pair of Magnepan 20.7X loudspeakers ($30,000/pair). These Maggies are three-way affairs with a true ribbon tweeter and quasi-ribbons on the midrange and bass.

It had been a long time since I'd listened to a pair of Maggies, and I was immediately reminded why I almost bought a pair for my first speakers. Paired with the H600, they gave a smooth, relaxed presentation of the music. Magnepan speakers can be difficult to drive, but the H600 never sounded strained. I was also impressed with the amount of bass I was hearing. Congrats to Hegel for such a great pairing.

Pilot Radio
Pilot Radio returned with their own room and a new power amp to go with their great Pilot Preampifier (Reviewed here) ($3590 to $3890) that I reviewed previously. The 232 Stereophonic Power Amp ($4790) is a push-pull EL84 design that puts out 15 Wpc. Other equipment in the system was a Linn Majik LP12 turntable, fitted with a Linn MC cartridge, and a Benchmark DAC3 HGC ($2399). The speakers were DeVore Fidelity 0/93 ($11,160/pair). Yamaha YH-4000 headphones ($2499) were available. The wiring was comprised of Prosper Cables 16AWG Jupiter Cotton and Lacquer speaker cables ($107/pair), Prosper Classic Line RCA patch ($90/pair), Prosper Core Line RCA patch ($110/pair), and Prosper Cables Core Line XLR ($180/pair). The equipment rack was Butcher Block Rigid Rack 2 ($834).

It was great to hear the two units together. The music they were making with the Devore speakers was smooth as silk. It didn't hurt that Barak was playing a MoFi pressing of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. It had tuneful bass, a warm midrange, and very refined highs—my compliments to Barak for producing such musical gear—the best bang-for-the-buck systems at the show.

Van Zyl Audio
One of the local companies that has been a regular at SWAF is Van Zyl Audio. Every year, Johan van Zyl has brought a new speaker design to the show. This time he offered the masses truly brand-new speakers, less than a week old! The Equiems are two-way horns. The mid-range horn is driven by an 8" driver and reaches down to 125 Hz. The high-frequency horns use a pair of AMT tweeters. They use only one capacitor as a low-frequency cut-off in the crossover. To fill out the bass, Van Zyl uses a powerful BB-15 subwoofer. A Neo iDSD ($999) was used for the source, and Found Music monoblocks provided the amplification.

As expected from horns, they were fast with plenty of jump factor. Paired with the sub, this room had plenty of Sturm und Drang. This was a popular room for good reason. I compliment Mr. van Zyl on continuing to forge his own path in horn design.

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