An aerial acoustic acquisition system including: an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); an acoustic sensing payload attached to the UAV including: at least one SOI microphone configured to detect a first audio signal including a signal of interest; and at least one noise detection microphone configured to detect a second audio signal including sound generated by the UAV, and a processing suite including a processor configured to receive first audio data corresponding to the first audio signal and second audio data corresponding to the second audio signal from the acoustic sensing suite, and process the first audio data using the second audio data to extract the signal of interest from the first audio data.