Hapa Audio KnØt Upgrade Cable

I first got to know of Hapa Audio thanks to a thread on Head-Fi, and it was an introduction to the brand that left me with mixed feelings. A lot was described, but could one person really come up with all of it? It was more curiosity than anything else that led to this coverage, and I am glad I reached out. Jason is the guy behind Hapa Audio, and it's not often that a cable maker can showcase both aesthetics with customization galore and R&D based on the scientific principle. I mentioned before how his cables are a labor of love, but based on the conversations I have had thus far, they are also clearly products with many thoughts and tests put into them.


Today, we will take a look at Hapa Audio's recently released KnØt flagship analog cable, of which there are both headphone and IEM variants. The subject in question is the KnØt IEM cable, and there are three versions based on the conductor type. No matter which you go with, it will ship in a custom leather case as seen above, which can be changed to vegan leather upon request, a cool touch for those who don't jive with leather. All this is a result of you spending some time with Jason beforehand to come up with the design of everything that ships your way. Build quality and customization are key aspects of what Hapa Audio aims to produce, and the company name itself brings up thoughts of Polynesia. The cable demo section stitched to the case in its vivid colors and bead towards the end certainly match the name. This particular case is a light blue with branding on the front, and magnets are used to keep it clasped shut. Opening it, we see a fairly crowded cable to where I am not sure this is the most practical storage solution should you want to place IEMs inside, too. I would rather see a larger case, especially as some IEMs can be on the larger size as with the Lime Ears Pneuma. That having been said, the keychain loop is appreciated since it not only allows for this to be tied to, say, a bag, but also other accessories to be tied to it, such as a Tile or the equivalent from other companies to keep track of your precious items.


The cable comes coiled in, and nothing prepared me for what I saw with it completely removed. Look at that absolute unit! I took many photos with my DSLR setup, a few different backdrops, and even put the cable under the microscope. It made selecting photos quite difficult, as while the Pneuma is a set you need to see to best appreciate, the KnØt IEM cable is one you need to both see and hold in your hands. As per usual with such cables, this loaner cable was made to order, although I decided to let Hapa Audio choose what to use. The product thus uses the same subjectively gorgeous sky blue and dark blue sleeving Hapa Audio refers to as nylon silk, which isn't really a thing. I get the intention since the nylon is extremely soft and smooth to where it's still quite supple and has a bending radius that may surprise despite its large diameter, and this is before you realize how lightweight it is for the size. So if you thought these were too big to cable manage on your person easily, that's not the issue as much as individual strands sticking to a tacky surface, including, say, a wool jacket. Even so, the extensive braiding makes for no microphonics in use.

Interspersed throughout are strands of the conductor core, which makes for what Hapa Audio describes as βeta-Sine (Balanced Sinusoidal Isolated Network) geometry. The geometrical braiding seemingly stems from experience and knowledge gained with previous headphone cables and aims to reject RFI and EMI in the cable while maintaining "proper interaction between the signal positive and negative poles of a balanced output." It's marketing for sure, but worked on me enough to pair this geometry with the "sacred geometry" used in the Lime Ears Pneuma IEMs! The balanced output also doesn't mean you need to have a balanced connector to the source of course, with options 2.5/3.5/4.4 mm connectors in various materials and finishes on top of any other custom connector you can think of. This cable has a rhodium-plated, copper/beryllium alloy genuine 4.4 mm Pentaconn connector, with the housing being so far removed from even the likes of the PW Audio No.10 cable we just saw. It then heads to the cable itself, where this particular version went with a mix of copper and silver conductors in extremely thin (80 µm) strands that require soldering under a microscope using Mundorf Supreme high silver/gold content solder. The individual nylon strands are even thinner, and the wire bundles are internally dampened by more ultra-thin nylon (only ~1 µm) in diameter to allow for a fiber ensemble that bends, flexes, and stretches to prevent it from suddenly catching on something and jerking the IEMs out of your ears.

I can vouch for this too, having mentioned above how the bending radius is deceptively small for its size, and then we get to the second artisan element in the making of the KnØt IEM cable, the MokuTi ("Ti" for titanium) cinch and Y-splitter beads similar to some Damascus steel treatment procedures. For those curious, the beads are forged with a layered titanium alloy, with each layer in a slightly different composition making for the striking finish seen above. These are then heat-anodized and blued to produce the final finish, which makes for a cable that is partly art, partly engineering functionality, and partly just pure jewelry. Past the splitter is where things are far more in line with other IEM cables, as the chosen conductor leads to the 0.78 mm 2-pin plug I had chosen in a quad-core per-channel configuration. These are again rhodium-plated copper/beryllium in composition and do seem to be sourced from an OEM. This in itself isn't an issue, but I do have a problem with the plastic sheathing, which is far too retentive in shape and makes for a less-than-subtle ear hook that is hard to re-shape around the ears. To its credit, Hapa Audio has already set plans in motion not to have this repeat for paying customers, and note that this sample was one of the very first made as part of its marketing efforts before the KnØt IEM cable even launched. While I am complaining, I also think that sticker with the Hapa Audio logo could be better implemented as it comes off as cheap and detracts from the aesthetics of the cable.


I'll keep this section short and let the photos above mostly speak for themselves. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Hapa Audio KnØt IEM cable is substantially bigger and has far more customization options, but it is also more in your face in terms of colors and footprint than the predominantly silver PW Audio No.10 cable, which would otherwise be considered fairly flashy, but looks downright subtle and plain in comparison. You need to be absolutely sure the KnØt IEM cable is for you, and the Lime Ears Pneuma does end up pairing with it beautifully aesthetically.


We now get to the tricky part, as there will be people disagreeing with me no matter what I say. To many, an IEM cable is merely an analog conduit of power and the audio signal, and there's another camp which takes cable composition extremely seriously to where it is considered as important a component of the audio chain as any other. I lie in the middle in that I put my budget towards headphones/IEMs followed by the source and then the tracks/streaming service; only then do the cable and other aspects follow. Material processing and cable design have matured to where there are certain minimum standards already, so it's not often that I have had the sound signature affected by cables.

So when someone says, and this happens to at least be a somewhat agreed upon trait, that an all-copper cable is warm, silver adds detail and treble sparkle, and a mix of the two is a balance unlike no other, I have to take that with a grain of salt. Unless everything else is the same and as good as it gets, it's hard to judge such a statement in the first place. I would need to have the same Hapa KnØt IEM cable in the three versions of copper, silver, and copper/silver to even hold this experiment. Instead, I took the iFi GO blu with its dual 3.5 mm and 4.4 mm outputs, so it's the same DAC and power delivery stage, and used it to drive the Lime Ears Pneuma with both cables covered in this article. I then made sure the power output, and thus volume, was the same from both since the balanced output inherently provides more power at the same setting. The frequency response curves for the Lime Ears Pneuma with both cables are normalized at 500 Hz to avoid the imbalance issues at 1000 Hz, and we see the two are within error margins even so.

I still think the Hapa Audio KnØt IEM cable is better than the PW Audio No.10—hear me out, let me explain. Remember the 0.8–0.9 Ω resistance mentioned for the latter cable? The KnØt IEM cable measured 0.5–0.6 Ω for resistance, making it the better conductor. This in itself isn't as big a deal as the KnØt IEM cable also having lower capacitance and impedance to where the SPL of the Pneuma was slightly higher even at the same power output. The lower capacitance I can't quantify enough to my satisfaction, so instead of reporting numbers, I am being relative here. Also, whether it is placebo or price bias, I want to say that the Pneuma sounded more balanced out even though I doubt I would clear a blind test to back that statement. The Hapa Audio KnØt IEM cable did not suddenly open up the Pneuma and make it sound tangibly better over the other, but is still a very good cable, so take that for what you will and note that I can't really speak for other people's experiences.