A completely stand‐alone pulse‐echo‐overlap system which can be easily built using commercially available integrated circuits is described. The system uses a broadband pulse to excite the transducer. The equipment is relatively cheap and yet the sensitivity of the transit time (and, hence, velocity of sound measurement), is made high by making use of a digital frequency synthesizer of 0.01‐Hz resolution, specially constructed for this purpose. Except for the oscilloscope the instrument does not require any other equipment for its operation.