Sound on Sound

British music technology magazine

Sound on Sound is a monthly music technology magazine. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, and interviews with industry professionals. Due to its technical focus, it is predominantly aimed at the professional recording studio market as well as artist project studios and home recording enthusiasts. Independently owned, the magazine is published by SOS Publications Group in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The magazine was conceived, created and founded by brothers Ian and Paul Gilby and their friend Godfrey Davies in 1985. It was originally launched in 1985 on the UK Channel 4 television programme, The Tube, championing the convergence of MIDI, computer technology and recording equipment. At the time of its launch, text for the magazine was edited on BBC Model B computers and pages were physically pasted together with wax. The modern magazine is full colour throughout and led the way in using colour as much as possible through its pages when other magazines used colour only for the front cover and special features. In January 2008, the website expanded to include podcasts and videos featuring interviews, product demonstrations, featured articles and news stories. The magazine is a regular attendee of worldwide music technology conferences and events such as AES, the NAMM Show, NAB, IBC and Musikmesse, and regularly publishes articles, videos and podcasts reporting from these events. A sister magazine, Performing Musician which covered all aspects of live performance, was launched in early 2008, but closed at the end of 2009. The magazine was named after the Bill Nelson's Red Noise album Sound on Sound and as of 2003 the website had a Bill Nelson Shop section in which this musician's independently produced CDs could be bought.

All news and articles printed in the magazine since January 1994 have also been published online via its website, often including rich media content such as video and audio files that correspond to the content of individual articles. The articles printed in the magazine before January 1994 have been digitised and are hosted by the Mu:zines magazine archive.

In 2005, Sound on Sound celebrated its 20th birthday by providing a series of 3 cover mounted DVD roms with the magazine, one released in March, August and November. The DVD roms featured extra content not available on the website or in the magazine including several featured articles, a selection of reader demo tracks, tutorials on various aspects of music recording, samples for readers to use in their own compositions, and additional resources.

Brazilian – The Brazilian edition was launched in Brazil in 2010. It includes articles translated from the UK magazine. North America – In 2001 a North American edition was added and includes all of the articles from the UK edition as well as local distributor contact details and dollar prices, and US advertising.

In September 2010, Sound on Sound set up an annual awards competition enabling subscribers of the magazine to vote for a range of products, the winners of each category to be announced in the next Winter NAMM show (usually held in January). Voting entered subscribers into a prize draw.