Here we are at the start of our fourth great year and Sound On Sound continues to go from strength to strength. Never ones to let the grass grow under our feet, we have been busy assessing the responses to our most recent readership survey - a straw poll conducted amongst a random selection of UK and overseas subscribers - which have provided us with a valuable insight into what direction you would like the magazine to head in and what topics you would most like us to concentrate on. Without giving the game away, let me just say that all your suggestions have been carefully noted and the best of them will be incorporated within forthcoming issues. Indeed, some of them have already found their way into this, our biggest ever issue!

As this is the start of a new volume for Sound On Sound, we have taken the usual opportunity to perform a spot of visual editing and design manipulation to help us put across our ideas more easily, and have introduced several new regular columns including 'Software Support' and 'Sounding Off'. We hope you like them.

The most common request we receive from readers is for 'background information' related to many of the articles we publish. If I had a pound for every phone call and letter we have received in the past three years asking if we knew of a 'good' book that could provide more information about such and such a topic, I would be driving around in a Ferrari by now!

There appears to be no shortage of good books published as far as we can determine (although some books can only be described as 'utter dross'), it's just that nobody seems to know where to get hold of them. High Street bookshops seem more keen to fill their shelves with the latest Mills & Boon paperback than books about the truly important things in life - like MIDI. Most hi-tech music stores seem reluctant to stock related reading matter (it takes up too much valuable space I am told), completely ignoring the fact that stocking books is a beneficial service to the customer and another good reason for them to pay a visit to the shop.

OK, we said, if no-one else seems keen on the idea of supplying our readers with books about MIDI, sampling, recording techniques, computing and so forth, when there is obviously such a great demand, then we will do it instead. So we have! It's called the 'SOS Bookshop'.

On page 61 of this issue you will find a mouth-watering collection of books to do with hi-tech music and recording. These are available mail order from the magazine, and should go some way towards plugging the knowledge gaps of SOS readers with enquiring minds. More books will be added each month to build up the most comprehensive and up-to-date information resource you will find anywhere. We know you'll find them useful. Happy reading!