SWAF 2025 Highlights From The Upper Floors
Delightfully dynamic stereo sound systems at the SWAF 2025 audiophile show.
Southwest Audio Fest 2025 Show Report By Michael Harkins

Room 1141   Spatial Audio Labs
Spatial Audio Labs powered their Q3 three-way open baffle speakers ($13,995) with their Blackbird monoblocks ($8,895) here at the SWAF 2025 high-end audiophile show. The dipole design helps eliminate room modes that can make bass reproduction do crazy things in many room environments. These speakers are called a hybrid dipole since the tweeter is allowed to emanate from the front baffle alone, allowing for a more detailed sound presentation from the high-frequency drivers.

The twin 15" woofers at top and bottom of the speaker baffles along with the midrange and tweeter at the center, produce sufficient energy to fill the room with plenty of sound. I was impressed by their complete lack of coloration and the ability to produce well-managed bass in this room at the SWAF 2025 show.

Room 1105   Rizzi Acoustic And Linear Tube Audio
Another unique design speaker came from Rizzi Acoustics. They are a Uraguay-based company with their "Owl" speaker being the very first model to be offered in the USA. They are priced at $4,500 per pair and will be available in a few months. Alejandro Piñeyrua is a co-founder of the company, and he demonstrated the speakers for an eager crowd of audio enthusiasts in room 1105.

The speakers are unique in that they use a flat panel made of a specially selected foam material, which makes up the front part of the speaker. The panel is the driver for the speaker, but it is supplemented by a special compression driver which augments the driver's high-frequency response. Each speaker is roughly 37" in height by 26" in width. The compression driver increases the depth to 12".

From Alejandro's description, one gets the impression that the speaker was designed with several cut-and-try methods like Edison's experimentation with the light bulb. But it works. Their sound is more open due to the dipole movement of the panel, and there is no lack of bass response that I could notice. Bass is said to go as low as a respectable 35 Hz.

Part 2: Coming Up Next
These were some highlights from the upper floors of Southwest Audio Fest which I mostly covered on day one of the event. On day two, many more rooms awaited on the first two floors of the event – lobby and mezzanine levels. Those floors had much larger rooms and were available to demonstrate some of the beefier gear that works well in larger spaces. So, in part 2, I will cover those rooms and summarize my perspective on the high points of the Southwest Audio Fest 2025.

---> Continue to Part 2 of Michael Harkins' SWAF 2025 show coverage.

---> Back to the SWAF 2025 show report homepage.