Just Listen Records

Jared Sacks – founder, producer and engineer of Channel Classics – records and masters the albums below. He founded the jazz label Just Listen Records together with his son Jonas in 2015, who produces the recordings.

Recorded in the highest resolution audio possible today – DSD 256 – the artists get to record each track a few times. This creates a concert-like performance in the recording studio, all about playing together and balancing the sound on set. The artists choose the best take of each track and the resulting audio files are not ‘fussed with’ afterwards: (hardly any) editing, no mixing, just the music as it was played at the time – both artistically and sonically.

It all started in 2015 with the first release of ‘8 Ensembles in 1 Bit’ – giving 8 groups of artists the chance to discover the DSD recording technique by giving them carte blanche regarding the repertoire. The projects that were recorded after that all use the same approach. You will find yourself amid the musicians, beautifully balanced.

Compare it to a concert listening experience and judge for yourself.

The second Just Listen album Raizes featured Breno Viricimo and Friends. Raizes was recorded in November of 2015 and released mid 2016. In 2017 the E.P. ‘Firsts’ from Zoto was released, with beautiful songs recorded in the same way.

Recent releases on Just Listen Records include DSD 256 Stereo & DSD 256 Multichannel albums The Contemporary Fortepiano with the Rembrandt Frerichs Trio, The Sweetest Sound with Angelo Verploegen, Ed Verhoeff & Eric van der Westen, Side by Side with singer Laura Polence, Changing Landscapes with the duo of pianist Philipp Rüttgers and viola and quintone player Oene van Geel, and First Meeting performed by the Harmen Fraanje Trio with special guest Fredrik Ljungkvist.

More recently recorded and released music in DSD is from the trio Corsen, Berry and Rojer, an album titled The Duke Book, from Angelo Verploegen and an album introducing The Coo.