Hapa Audio Haiku XLR Interconnects

The Haiku XLR is Hapa Audio's top analog interconnect. Hapa says it took a year longer to develop than the Haiku RCA, because a balanced cable has to manage a differential signal path in ways a single-ended design doesn't, and it had to do so inside an aerogel construction.

Hapa's best, in balanced form.

The Design

Hapa Audio is a small cable maker in Aurora, Colorado, founded by Jason Wong in 2020, and every cable is built by hand. The Haiku XLR uses UPOCC pure silver conductors in an aerogel dielectric, a silica material Hapa describes as 99.8% air. The conductors are woven in a noise-canceling geometry that Hapa designed specifically for balanced operation instead of adapting the RCA design.

How It Sounds

This is the best interconnect we currently offer. Tonal balance, resolution, dynamics, soundstage: the Haiku XLR stands with the finest cables we've heard on every one. What sets it apart happens at the edges.

The Leading Edge

Start with the front edge of every note. Transients arrive fast and natural, with real punch and snap when the recording calls for it, and they come wrapped in a natural flow of energy that keeps the music moving and relaxed. Bass follows suit: quick, articulate, and full. You hear the stick hit the drumhead, then the drum itself blooming and decaying into the space around it.

The Edge of Perception

Then there's the far edge, the faintest sounds on the recording, where the Haiku pulls off its greatest trick. Plenty of great cables reveal air and low-level detail. The Haiku goes further and gives those tiny sounds a place to live. A whisper of reverb, a distant instrument, the last trace of a decaying note: each one holds its exact position and its depth in the stage, as solid and three-dimensional as the main body of the music. The whole recording stays dimensional, right down to the quietest sounds.

The Haiku lives at the edges: the leading edge of every note, and the edge of what you can hear.

Once you've heard those quietest details placed this precisely, it becomes the way you want every recording to sound. That's the Haiku's real gift, and it's why it sits at the top of our interconnect lineup.

Put those two edges together and you get the Haiku's composure. When the music gets dense, a full band at full tilt or an orchestra building to a peak, everything plays together as one performance while each voice and instrument stays clear, intelligible, and locked in its own place on the stage. You can follow any single line through the busiest passage, or step back and take in the whole.

Where It Fits

Choose it for balanced connections in a system that's resolving enough to use a cable at this level. The Haiku RCA is the single-ended version. Tweek Geek offers in-home auditions nationwide, and we can arrange a comparison of the XLR against the RCA in your system.

Press Recognition

• 6moons (September 2022) covered the launch of the Haiku RCA, quoting Hapa's founder on aerogel and the cable's construction. Read the article at 6moons
• AudioCircle's Hapa Audio circle, tour reviewer impressions of the Haiku RCA. These are listener comments rather than a professional review, and reviews of the XLR are on the way. Read the thread at AudioCircle

Want to compare the Haiku XLR in your system? Give us a call, and we can arrange it.

Specifications

• Dielectric: Aerogel
• Conductors: UPOCC pure silver
• Geometry: Noise-canceling, designed for balanced operation
• Termination: XLR balanced
• Lengths: 1m, 1.5m
• Construction: Handmade by Hapa Audio in Aurora, Colorado, USA