Ocean of Sound is a 1996 compilation album compiled and produced by English musician and author David Toop. The two-disc, cross-licensed "various artists" compilation contains 32 tracks culled from a variety of musical sources, including dub, exotica, free jazz, and field recordings. Toop compiled the recordings to serve as both a historical survey of ambient music and an aural companion to his 1995 book Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds.

Ocean of Sound was released in January 1996 by Virgin Records. It was well received by music critics and finished fourth in the voting for The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop poll. The album later went out of print.

In 1995, David Toop published his second book, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, which examined music as a medium for deep mental involvement. In the book, Toop said that ambient music can be defined as music listened for relaxation or music that "taps into the disturbing, chaotic undertow of the environment". As an aural companion to the book, Toop curated the compilation album Ocean of Sound, which would also serve as a historical survey of ambient music. The album was released in January 1996 by Virgin Records. It later went out of print, which music journalist Michaelangelos Matos said was because such cross-licensed compilation albums "seldom stay available for very long".

Ocean of Sound is a two-disc, cross-licensed "various artists" compilation that contains 32 tracks culled from a variety of musical sources, including dub, exotica, free jazz, and field recordings. According to AllMusic's John Bush, all of the songs compiled for the album recapitulate the theme of the book—"that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering." In an interview for Perfect Sound Forever, Toop explained why he included free jazz on an album of ambient music, which is commonly thought of as background music:

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