A new canonical sound velocity profile is presented in which the velocity cubed varies linearly with depth and is characterized by two parameters. The ray acoustic equations have exact analytic solutions for this profile, and the expressions for horizontal range, travel time, and intensity are derived. It is shown that the canonical profile can be derived approximately from Hamilton’s profile for bottom sediments obtained from sonobuoy data. The agreement between the two is shown to be excellent for both the velocity and the velocity gradient even for sediment thicknesses of 1 km.