The format change from vinyl to CD is not easy. The smaller CD restricts the possibilities of visual presentation. The first CD is released in 1989 and is a studio recording of Barry Guy’s composition Harmos (Intakt CD 013) with the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. The second CD released by Intakt Records is Uluru, the solo recording of the Biel saxophonist Hans Koch (Intakt CD 014). This is followed by the CD Five Voices by the American drummer and singer David Moss and Direct Sound (Intakt CD 015), the duo album Konsumdelika- tessware by the GDR saxophonist Dietmar Diesner with the Swedish drummer Sven-Åke Johansson (Intakt CD 016) and the guitar solo World of Strings by the Zürich musician Stephan Wittwer (Intakt CD 017). 

In 1993, Intakt Records curates a five-day label presentation at the Moods jazz club in Zürich. The “Subscribe to Intakt” campaign is launched as part of this festival. The subscription with regular direct sales to subscribers becomes an important economic pillar for Intakt Records.

The composition Sahara Dust by the English composer and bassoonist Lindsay Cooper was written as a response to the first Gulf War, premiered in Switzerland in 1991 at the Taktlos Festival in Basel, Bern and Zürich and then recorded at Radio Studio Zürich for Intakt Records (Intakt CD 029). The lyrics were written by the Australian writer and singer Robyn Archer based on an idea by Cooper. Cooper, known for the two feminist film projects The Song of the Shirt (by Susan Clayton and Jonathan Curling) and The Gold Diggers (by Sally Potter), for which she wrote the music, as well as for her collaboration with the avant-rock band Henry Cow and with Irène Schweizer at the legendary concerts with The Feminist Improvising Group, retired from live performances due to a serious illness and died in 2013 at the age of 62. Sahara Dust is an impressive political and musical statement and one of Cooper’s last recordings.

In 1994, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, four legends of East German jazz, Berlin East residents Conrad Bauer, Uli Gumpert and Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and Günter Baby Sommer from Dresden, traveled to Zürich. The jazz musicians with the band name Zentralquartett – an ironic allusion to the Central Committee of the GDR – record a new album in the Radio Studio Zürich for Intakt Records. The CD Plie (Intakt CD 037) attracts great international response. And in Germany, people are amazed that a Swiss label is producing music by East German musicians. A German newspaper notes that “this music must first be re-imported…from Switzerland.” There are four more releases from the Zentralquartett in the catalogue: Careless Love (Intakt CD 050), Zentralquartett (Intakt CD 069), 11 Songs – Aus Teutschen Landen (Intakt CD 113) and the cult album Auf Der Elbe Schwimmt Ein Rosa Krokodil (Intakt CD 142), released first in 1976 on the Berlin label FMP and out of print, is reissued as a CD by Intakt. The two duo albums Das Donnernde Leben (Intakt CD 169) and La Paloma (Intakt CD 198) by the long-time musician friends Ulrich Gumpert and Günter Baby Sommer – the Zentralquartett nucleus – are classics of the jazz piano duo. The brothers Conrad and Johannes Bauer record a trombone duo Bauer – Bauer (Intakt CD 040) and a quartet adding the two guitarists Joe Sachse and Uwe Kropinski Doppelmoppel – Outside This Area (Intakt CD 136). Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky makes the duo record The Salmon (Intakt CD 148) with the drummer Michael Griener. Ulrich Gumpert is present with two releases by the Ulrich Gumpert Quartet: Quartette (Intakt CD 127) and A New One (Intakt CD 257).