Microwave engineers and geomorphologists require rainfall data with a much greater temporal resolution and a better representation of the numbers of large raindrops than is available from current commercial instruments. This paper describes an acoustic instrument that determines rain parameters from the sound of raindrops falling into a tank of water. There is a direct relationship between the kinetic energy (KE) of a raindrop and the acoustic energy that it creates upon impact. Rain KE flux density is estimated from measurements of the sound field in the tank, and these have been compared to measurements from a co-sited commercial disdrometer. Eight months of data have been collected in the eastern UK. Comparisons of rain KE estimated by the two instruments are presented and links between the KE and rainfall intensity are discussed. The sampling errors of the two instruments are analysed to show that the acoustic instrument can produce rain KE measurements with a 1 s integration time with sampling uncertainty of the same size as commercial instruments using a 1 min integration time.