The song that kept changing: a-ha at Han Eum Audio

The song before the hit

Take On Me did not arrive fully formed. a-ha's official history traces it back to Lesson One, taped in Norway in late 1982, followed by a 1983 demo and a first release produced by Tony Mansfield. When that single found almost no sales, the band tried again with Alan Tarney, returning to the feel of an earlier demo for the recording that finally travelled.²

That history changes the listening question. Instead of treating familiarity as the end of the story, hear the song as the result of repeated choices: an idea kept intact while its recorded shape was tested, rejected and rebuilt.²

Follow the motion, then the space

HFI used a 44.1 kHz/16-bit FLAC file of Hunting High and Low, released by Warner Bros. on 1 June 1985 and stored on the DELA N1 music library.

Let the first play belong to the whole song. On the next, follow the opening keyboard figure and the pulse beneath it; then listen for how Harket's voice occupies the space without losing the forward movement. The point is not to turn a pop song into a checklist, but to notice how quickly its parts establish momentum.

A shared clock with separate outputs

The system included a MUTEC REF10 SE120 master clock, a DELA N1 music library and DELA S1 network switch. A Wattson Audio Madison Streamer with its Madison Power S supply fed Madison amplifiers driving Jean Maurer JM 320E stand-mount loudspeakers.

MUTEC specifies eight galvanically isolated, individually switchable BNC outputs on the REF10 SE120. Two are 50-ohm connections and six are 75-ohm connections, allowing compatible components with either impedance to receive the 10 MHz reference simultaneously.³

For this recording, keep the system question modest and musical: can you follow the keyboard line, programmed pulse and voice as one continuous piece of movement, while still hearing the room around the loudspeakers? Return to the opening after the final chorus and notice whether the scale feels different once the whole arc is in memory.

A sweet-spot perspective from Han Eum Audio

HFI recorded the session at Han Eum Audio on 13 October 2026. A matched pair of DPA-4011 microphones fed a Zoom F8n Pro through Vertere microphone cables at 192 kHz/32-bit float.

A laser distance meter matched the microphones' distances from the loudspeakers at the position where that pair most closely captured the sound heard at the sweet spot. That microphone-dependent position is not necessarily the physical listening seat.

Sit in your own sweet spot with headphones and begin with the song you already know. Then give its revisions a little room in your mind: Take On Me became familiar because a-ha refused to leave the earlier versions where they were.²