An improved underwater earphone, insensitive to depth, has been developed. This new transducer offers good efficiency and yields speech reproduction comparable to most air acoustic earphones. The earphone design provides tympanic, rather than bone‐conduction, sensing, thereby providing directional signal information to the listener. Pairs of these devices have been used successfully in a directional communication system for underwater swimmers. Threshold levels and some man‐earphone equal‐loudness contours were obtained for this device.