Introducing: KnØt our ultimate headphone cable design

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Pez


AC folks,

Happy Fall! I just got done raking and bagging leaves. I had a little help from Copper!  :green:

All the fall colors serves as the perfect background to officially announce something I've been working on for a long time.

I know in general this crowd is all about two channel stereo. That said, rather than just announce this exciting new product on Head-Fi I really wanted to share this with my forum of origin.

A year ago I was inspired by an idea that became an obsession; Can I create a headphone cable that utilizes geometry to take full advantage of a balanced headphone and amp? All other headphone cable designs outside of Hapa are merely braided to look nice and keep the cable together. I wanted to do something that utilized geometry to it's fullest potential.

It was apparent that if I were to create what I had envisioned that it was going to require a ton of research and a ton of ad-hoc training as well as designing the tools to do something like this from scratch. The end results both sonically and visually speak for themselves.

Introducing KnØt Full size and KnØt IEM.


KnØt Is one of my favorite design concepts. The cables are handmade from lightweight silk nylon on a loom that was designed in-house by Hapa Audio. Most of the research and development of this product took the form of me just practicing and practicing to get the geometry tighter and as obsessively ideal as possible. The process also consisted of me designing and redesigning the equipment required just to make these unique pieces.


KnØt's proprietary β-Sine geometry is designed with several things in mind. First of course are sonics. One of the most breathtaking features of KnØt is the insanely detailed braid. This braid geometry was designed to keep the phase original and phase inverted legs of the leads in a sinusoidal parallel throughout the entire length of the cable, while simultaneously keeping the Left channel leads at a 90 degree angle from the Right channel leads. A very difficult design parameter to create. check out my more in-depth explanation here: http://hapaaudio.com/technology/b-sine/

Because we utilize our angel Hair Litz wire (similar to the wire configuration used in our interconnects) the sound quality is astounding and as with all Hapa designs, it NEEDS to be experienced to be believed. The cable itself is incredibly flexible and was designed to stretch as well. It might seem like an odd detail to design a cable to stretch, but we did so specifically to help prevent the cable's delicate Angel Hair Litz wire from ripping internally as well as prevent potential damage from the cable becoming snagged. IEMs in particular as susceptible to this. Rather than the cable snagging and ripping your headphones out of your ears or off of your head, KnØt dynamically stretches giving you a few moments of feedback helping you avert potential disaster.


Each piece is unique and utilizes titanium fittings handmade by our genius beadmaker in Slovakia. We even went as far as to design our very own titanium barrel that works with 2.5 mm TRRS, 3.5 mm TRS as well as 4.4 mm pentaconn. An international design effort of this magnitude was no small task to pull off and neither myself nor our bead artisan were willing to compromise on our vision. The end result; a handmade titanium barrel with our unique 'heatsink fin' look that serves as a very stable purchase for the end user to plug/unplug the connector with ease. This is just one small part of the relentless lengths we went in the design of KnØt.


Please check out these links for more details!

KnØt IEM Pure Copper

KnØt IEM Pure Silver/Copper hybrid

KnØt IEM Pure Silver

KnØt Fullsize Pure Copper

KnØt Fullsize Pure Silver/Copper hybrid

KnØt Fullsize Pure Silver

We also have a couple of reviews from folks who tried KnØt out prior to launch:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=176471.0

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=175714.0

Thanks for reading folks, feel free to reach out to me via PM if you are interested in ordering!
« Last Edit: 8 Nov 2021, 06:45 pm by Pez »

mgalusha

Re: Introducing: KnØt our ultimate headphone cable design
« Reply #1 on: 8 Nov 2021, 11:31 pm »
Must resist the KnØtty jokes....

They look great Jason, I've no doubt they sound as nice as they look.

Pez

Re: Introducing: KnØt our ultimate headphone cable design
« Reply #2 on: 9 Nov 2021, 03:58 pm »
 :lol:

Thanks for the kudos! Sebastien and I are working hard on getting pieces into the hands of reviewers on Head-Fi.

If anyone is interested in a review piece let me know via PM!

Here's a piece that I made for a reviewer and he received it yesterday!


« Last Edit: 9 Nov 2021, 05:01 pm by Pez »